Understanding Android Application Sandbox.
Application sandbox is a security mechanism through which individual android applications run in their own “space” and cannot interact with other installed apps or the Android OS without proper permissions.
Now, let's understand it in a little detail.
Need of application sandbox
Say, you have installed Chrome and Firefox on your device. Without application sandbox Chrome will have the access to all files on the device, it can modify or delete some essential files of Firefox making it crash/malfunction. You will identify it as some bug/issue in Firefox and will un-install it and continue using Chrome.
Chrome Supremacy Continues.. 😃
Jokes aside, Application Sandbox prevents apps to do anything malicious to other apps or the OS itself.
Background
Since Android is built on top of the Linux Kernel it uses the following security features of the Linux Kernel, namely:
- Process Isolation
- User-Based Permission Model
- Inter-Process Communication (IPC)
Application sandbox is the combination of these features to limit apps' access to other apps and Operating Systems resources.
Android assigns a unique ID to every app and runs it in separate processes.
In terms of Linux, each running app is a unique user with access to personal space on the disk. Without necessary permission, it cannot access/interact with another user (app).
This controls the access of each app and prevents any malicious app from interacting with other apps or the OS.
Since this Application sandboxing is done at the kernel level it is ensured that each application runs in an isolated environment (process) regardless of any development-related factors like SDKs, APIs, or programming languages.
Conclusion
This is a small, simple, and concise Android Application sandboxing explanation if you want to read an explanation with more jargon (details 😏)
Go here at the official Android docs.
Please clap if this was of any use to you.
Cheers!!!
