A framework for on-device privilege escalation exploit executionon Android

Abstract

Exploits on mobile phones can be used for various reasons; a benignone may be to achieve system-level access on a device that was lockedby the manufacturer or service provider (also known as jailbreaking'or rooting’), while potentially malicious reasons are manifold.Independently of the use case however, a specific exploit is notsufficient to achieve the desired access rights. Typically, exploitsprovide emphtemporary privilege escalation immediately after theirexecution. To provide additional access to applications, emphpermanentprivilege escalation is required – in the benign case, includingsecure access control for the user to decide which (parts of) applicationsare granted elevated access. In this paper, we present a frameworkthat can use arbitrary temporary exploits on Android devices to achievepermanent `root’ capabilities for select (parts of) applications.

Publication
Proc. IWSSI/SPMU 2011: 3rd International Workshop on Security andPrivacy in Spontaneous Interaction and Mobile Phone Use, colocatedwith Pervasive 2011