I want to secure my sqlite database.
I searched a lot but ended up with the suggestions of using SQLCipher.
Is there any new advancement in this field other than SQLCipher?
Please suggest.
If you don't want to use SQLCipher, One thing you can do is encrypt your data before storing it in the database and decrypt it at runtime when populating it.
You can use a encryption key that you can store on Firebase and retrieve it from there at your app startup, this will add another layer of security to your encryption because the key will not be exposed inside the app if someone decompiles the app.
I'm securing my database on my own, procedure is following:
ORMLite used as ORM (platform independent ORM over SQLite)
All sensible data stored in BLOB's
BLOB's secured using standard encryption technique, e.g. com.madgag.spongycastle works well under Android
I am building an app which generates a random password and you can keep it along with your other details such as username, website url, name etc.
Basically a password management thing.
Things to be stored:
When I am clicking on the save button, I wanted it to be saved somewhere locally. So that, I could retrieve them and display it in another activity.
Can I share those things in SharedPreferences for all those password entries securely? [By password entry, I meant the entire class ]
I have referred to something like ComplexPreferences [ http://blog.nkdroidsolutions.com/class-object-in-sharedpreferences/ ]
I've tried them because I had created a class containing all these data [title, url, username, password, notes]. But I cannot retrieve them properly using a recyclerview. I'm ending up with some error.
If it cannot be done with SharedPreferences, how can I do it with SQLite Database?
But how can I save them securely? I don't know much about security in Android.
Please guide.
The shared preferences and sqlite db both are secure for an extend only.
It can be easily accessanle and can be modified even there are several apps available to edit the shared preferences and sqlite db in playstore . **
So i prefer not to store it locally
.you can use some kind of **algorithms and mechanisms to encrypt and decrypt the data that you are going to store locally.
if the device is rooted then its a SERIOUS ISSUE
Let's say, that you have a generated password along with other details like user name. Storing this kind of data is a perfect fit for SQLite. But, storing in plain text is not safe. Either the whole database or individual records should be encrypted. The former can be done using one of the open source database encryption libraries. For the later you have a couple of options:
Ask the user for a password each time he opens the app. Generate the actual encryption key using password-based encryption and the same salt value.
You can use the Android Keystore Provider to generate an encryption key and save it for you in a safe location on the device. Later, you retrieve the entry from the keystore and use it to encrypt/decrypt your database records using javax.crypto.Cipher.
Both options ensure that the encryption key is not be present in the app.
I still don't understand, why you need to save it locally? If only your application will be able to unlock data. In this case, only your application will have keys to working with this files.
For this example, you can easily work with SharedPreference with Private Mode. Furthermore, it's enough for most tasks. We using this option to save User's token, and it's Ok, for system. (If we talk about safety of this way, so you will have some risk for custom ROM, for Users, which manually flashed on device.)
If you need more complicated things, you can use sample, for using Android Keystore, with generating Key Pair, and saving data. For example you can check this source.
UPDATE!
So question was updated a lot, from first version. I will update information what you a looking for. Saving huge encrypted information locally.
Maybe easer way to do it, it's just use local encryption of data, as I described above, using Android KeyStore, KeyChain (links above). You will create our own KeyPair and will use for encryption and descryption some data. But this data, you will save in your DB in encrypted view.
Another more complex solution, will be creation of mechansim for encyption/decryption DB. As you described, you will save all information in DB, and after, just encrypt/decrypt you DB files. Fortunatly, we already have such library SQLCipher, just take a look. Fore example, this is pretty simple tutorial
I have a sqlite database in my app which I don't like others to extract and use it without my permission.
If this is impossible, can I use another DMS (instead of sqlite) which has this possibility?
is there any way to have an encrypted sqlite database?
You can help the user defend the user's data via something like SQLCipher for Android.
I have a sqlite database in my app which I don't like others to extract and use it without my permission.
An encrypted database, whether SQLCipher or otherwise, will not block access to the data. Your passphrase for the encryption will have to be in the app. That passphrase can be found by reverse-engineering your app. While you can use tools like DexGuard to try to make reverse-engineering more difficult, if somebody is interested in the data, they can get to it.
I have created SQLite database in android.
Here I decided to use encryption. I know about sqlite but I don't know how to implement sqlite encryption method, the data that is saved in database needs to be encrypted
and while retrieving data it should be decrypted.
You can use SQLChiper for Android for AES 256-bit encryption for .db files which i suppose is easier than handling encryption and decryption for each database query
Is it necessary to encrypt the sqlite db that goes with your Android app?
As Michael commented, it depends whether the data is required to be encrypted, but in general, it's better to encrypt the data and then store it in the database then encrypt-decrypt the whole database.