Access Control to Prevent Malicious JavaScript Code Exploiting Vulnerabilities of WebView in Android OS

Jing YU  Toshihiro YAMAUCHI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems   Vol.E98-D   No.4   pp.807-811
Publication Date: 2015/04/01
Publicized: 2014/12/04
Online ISSN: 1745-1361
DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2014ICL0001
Type of Manuscript: Special Section LETTER (Special Section on Information and Communication System Security―Against Cyberattacks―)
Category: Access Control
Keyword: 
Android,  WebView,  static analysis,  access control,  

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Summary: 
Android applications that using WebView can load and display web pages. Interaction with web pages allows JavaScript code within the web pages to access resources on the Android device by using the Java object, which is registered into WebView. If this WebView feature were exploited by an attacker, JavaScript code could be used to launch attacks, such as stealing from or tampering personal information in the device. To address these threats, we propose an access control on the security-sensitive APIs at the Java object level. The proposed access control uses static analysis to identify these security-sensitive APIs, detects threats at runtime, and notifies the user if threats are detected, thereby preventing attacks from web pages.