Mules and Permission Laundering in Android: Dissecting Custom Permissions in the Wild

Abstract

Android implements a permission system to regulate apps' access to system resources and sensitive user data. One salient feature of this system is its extensibility: apps can define their own custom permissions to expose features and data to other apps. However, little is known about how widespread the usage of custom permissions is, and what is the impact that these permissions can have on users' privacy and security. In this paper, we empirically study the usage of custom permissions at large scale, using a dataset of 2.2M pre-installed and app-store-downloaded apps. We find the usage of custom permissions to be widespread, and seemingly growing over time. Despite this prevalence, we find that custom permissions are virtually invisible to end users, and their purpose mostly undocumented. This lack of transparency can lead to serious security and privacy problems: we show that custom permissions can facilitate access to permission-protected system resources to apps that lack those permissions without user awareness. To detect this practice, we design and implement two static analysis tools, and highlight multiple concerning cases spotted in the wild. We conclude this study with a discussion of potential solutions to mitigate the privacy and security risks of custom permissions.