Android’s new anti-piracy system can easily be cracked

27th August, 2010 by adina
Tags: , , , ,

Justin Case, white hat hacker has just discovered that the recently implemented Google anti-piracy system for developers seems to be largely ineffective. Even if it was supposed to give tighter reins over applications, Android License Verification Library (ALVL) has been quickly cracked only by making a simple code patch which tricks Android, making it believe an application has a valid license to run on the system. According to an “Android Police” demo, it has been showed that the approach doesn’t even require root access to the operating system and could eventually be automated to use a script to patch applications for inexperienced users. Google’s spokespeople haven’t commented anything yet on the findings.

Google’s official Licensing Service is considered as more effective, but the new discovery may harm Android’s application market by trivializing piracy for anyone hoping to monitor piracy themselves. Hopes to increase the number of commercial-grade Android applications may be sabotaged by a lack of security; this has already been an issue, mainly because most Android applications are free and are often made by small or even hobbyist developers, not by veterans.

Piracy is also an issue on Apple’s iPhone, but this necessitates jailbreaking the smartphone in order to run applications without a signature approval from the manufacturer itself. The App Store is now the most triumphant portal, having both more applications than Android market (225,000 versus less than 100,000), as well as more paid, professionally-made apps.


  • Share

 

Readers Comments