Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms enable different components and applications within a mobile device to exchange data and trigger functionality. While vital for app functionality, improper IPC implementation can introduce significant security risks — including unauthorized data access, privilege escalation, and denial of service.
Tests Performed in IPC Security Assessment:
User Proprietary Data in Logcat
We check whether sensitive user information — such as credentials, personal data, or session tokens — is improperly logged to Logcat, making it accessible to other apps during debugging or runtime.
Technical Valuable Data in Logcat
This test verifies that sensitive technical data (like system paths, environment details, or debugging information) isn’t exposed in Logcat, as this could assist attackers in crafting exploits.
Exposed Components and Cross Application Authorization
We identify app components (Activities, Services, Broadcast Receivers, or Content Providers) that are unnecessarily exposed to other apps, testing for weak or missing authorization controls in cross-application interactions.
Permissions & Digital Signature Data Sharing Issues
This test examines the app’s use of permission flags and signature-level access controls to ensure that sensitive IPC endpoints or shared resources are restricted to trusted, signed apps only.
Clipboard Separation
We verify whether sensitive data is being copied to the system clipboard in a way that unauthorized apps could intercept it — a simple but often overlooked privacy risk on mobile devices.
Public Intents and Unauthenticated Data Sources
We test for Intents received from public or unauthenticated sources, ensuring the app validates data integrity and origin before processing external commands or information.
Public Intents and Authorization Flaws
This test focuses on identifying cases where public Intents trigger sensitive actions without properly enforcing authorization, potentially leading to privilege escalation or unauthorized operations.
Code Puzzling and Abusing Application State
We simulate attacks that manipulate the sequence and state of IPC calls or interactions, attempting to confuse the application’s logic into bypassing controls or triggering unintended behaviors.
Race Conditions, Deadlocks, and Concurrency Threats
Our mobile concurrency security testing identifies timing issues in IPC-related operations where multiple processes compete for the same resources, potentially causing denial of service, data corruption, or privilege escalation.
In-Device Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks
We assess whether attackers can exploit IPC endpoints, shared resources, or exposed components to crash the app, consume excessive system resources, or destabilize the device.