Publications

Emulating the Android Boot Process

Bertels, Alex R.; Bell, Robert E.; Eames, Brandon K.

Critical vulnerabilities continue to be discovered in the boot process of Android smartphones used around the world. The entire device's security is compromised if boot security is compromised, so any weakness presents undue risk to users. Vulnerabilities persist, in part, because independent security analysts lack access and appropriate tools. In response to this gap, we implemented a procedure for emulating the early phase of the Android boot process. This work demonstrated feasibility and utility of emulation in this space. By using HALucinator, we derived execution context and data flow, as well as incorporated peripheral hardware behavior. While smartphones with shared processors have substantial code overlap regardless of vendor, generational changes can have a significant impact. By applying our approach to older and modern devices, we learned interesting characteristics about the system. Such capabilities introduce new levels of introspection and operation understanding not previously available to mobile researchers.