Android SDK released
As detailed last week, the SDK for Android (the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) project) was made public yesterday.
Of course, from a security perspective we are interested in the security model in place, and how it could be abused by the bad guys. It is a little early to fully review the security model, but interested readers should take a look through the SDK security documentation. Interestingly, permissions are granted to applications at installation time. For example, if an application wishes to use certain features of the device (for example, camera, send SMS messages etc), the manifest for that application has to include the relevant request for that feature. At installation time, permission is either granted or denied. It will be interesting to probe this area to see how much reliance will be put on the user to spot potentially malicious feature requests.
![[Emulator within Android SDK]](http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs/images/blogs/sophoslabs/2007/11/and1.png)
Just to whet the appetite of budding developers, Google have created a developer challenge to financially reward those that create the most innovative and exciting applications. The prize? A share in some 10 million dollars. That’s a lot of appetite whetting which I am sure will spawn significant developer activity.
Posted on November 13th, 2007 by Fraser Howard, SophosLabs UKFiled under: General
Windows 7 security - A great leap forward or business as usual?
