A formal approach for the verification of the permission-based security model of Android

Abstract

This article reports on our experiences in applying formal methods to verify the security mechanisms of Android. We have developed a comprehensive formal specification of Android's permission model, which has been used to state and prove properties that establish expected behavior of the procedures that enforce the defined access control policy. We are also interested in providing guarantees concerning actual implementations of the mechanisms. Therefore we are following a verification approach that combines the use of idealized models, on which fundamental properties are formally verified, with testing of actual implementations using lightweight model-based techniques. We describe the formalized model, present security properties that have been proved using the Coq proof assistant and propose the use of a certified algorithm for performing verification activities such as monitoring of actual implementations of the platform and also as a testing oracle.

Keywords

• Android
• Formal idealized model
• Reference monitor
• Certified implementation
• Model-based security testing