can I make an application from an apk file that has been decompiled?
there's an app that has a very cool feature, I'd like to have one too. Is it possible to take features from other applications? For example, I want to make an app that connects to the car, and I don't know how to make the connection, can't I take it from an apk fail that i decompile?
everything. possible.
Technically or legally? Technically yes, but its very hard- almost always far harder than duplicating it for yourself. The process of doing it is called reverse engineering. To be good at it you pretty much need to be a master programmer, understand how application architectures work (including how the Android framework works behind the scenes), and will need to be able to identify and isolate the feature. And that will only really work if the feature is entirely client side.
Legally- too hard to say. Depends on what you're doing, if its patented, and your jurisdiction. Most legal reverse engineering is done with 2 teams, one that reverse engineers the code and describes it to the other team, and one team that reimplements it and the two teams are not allowed to work together or talk to one another. That minimizes the risk of copying the actual implementation. Taking the code exactly as is would be a copyright violation.
I implemented In app Billing in my Android application. I pretty much followed the sample (Dungeon) application to get it working. It seems to be functioning fine as of now. I now need to decide how much effort I should put into the Security portion.
I do have a server that I could use to implement the Security.java stuff. I also am currently using the standard PurchaseDatabase implementation.
As of right now I am thinking of just encrypting the .db file with a device specific key, and leaving Security.java alone.
My thinking is that my app is a pretty niche app, and I am not expecting a lot of hacking on it. If there are some people that put in the effort to save a couple bucks (each item to be purchased will only be $1), so be it.
I guess I am looking for opinions on what other people think about this...it seems there is no 100% secure implementation...just implementations that make the hacking not worth the effort. Have other people seen a lot of hacking of In App Purchases?
You got it right: you don't need to implement very complex protection features, you need to implement protection features that take too much time to be found and removed Here's a video from Google I/O 2011 about techniques to reduce "leechers": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnSNCXR9fbY, I thoroughly recommend it. Some techniques you may want to try are:
use LVL;
obfuscate code;
call LVL at random times from a background thread;
insert license checks mixed with normal code;;
CRC code files;
be industrious: use reflection in JNI to check signatures;
encrypt core libraries/resources and load them on the fly.
Some of these techniques are very simple, other require a non negligible effort. The best recommendation is to be creative, hide checks where crackers do not expect them.
Another important point is to make your application degrade gracefully if you suspect piracy. For example, don't throw an "invalid license" because your license check needs network access on application start; instead, store somewhere a "valid for two months" token and randomly update it. Check it after a random number of days (say, a random integer in the 30-60 days range). Customers won't notice this check and it is hard to crack because it will not be apparent after a lot of time, much more time than crackers are willing to spend on a single application.
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So we've been through this several times now, we release a game (for cheap) and someone hacks it and puts it up on a mirror. We setup Google Alerts for all our apps, so we get told daily who's doing the hacking. So far, we have implemented the licensing service as Google has suggested, our salt is randomly made each time the license is initiated with the unique device ID. We run the check service once, when the application is started for the first time. We then generate a 512 character hash for the key and the stored value that is compared against in SharedPreferences from there on out.
Now, I know that checking once is probably where the application is being blocked. Our bytecode has most likely been looked at and recompiled without the line that initiates the check.
From here, I don't want to obfuscate our code as I have seen it broken before. I want something a little more solid, and I also want to learn how to do this properly. I am more interested in learning than making money at this point since only 2% of people will ever look for a hacked version.
So far, on my own, I have come up with a random number generator that is placed in several startup areas of the game. When initiated (say, 1 out of 50 times) the license is checked. I know this would make it harder to hack because the cracker would have to eliminate each case, compile, eliminate, compile. This method however, is still crackable...so what do you guys suggest? Again, I am really interested in this process of security, so please educate, don't turn this into a discussion on obfuscation or checking periodically based on a timestamp.
Thanks
My idea isnt hacker proof, but might remove some of the interest for hacking the game.
Freemium model
1) Make the first 5-10 levels free so people can learn the game and have some fun without paying. Less will want to hack the first level and the game will spread even further by Freemium model.
Shareware/clustered levelpacks
2) Let part of the game levels or logic stay online. Eg. when reaching for level 5 or 10 or 15, then download small parts for the game, and every time submit the progress-log from the game and validate this against possible values + hashcodes. This could perhaps make it possible to automatically close down of hacked accounts.
Stealth cheater protection
3) You could also just count "small warning flags" that you place around in the game. Dont just check for the "validation" in the beginning, no build these flags into the game logic itself. Dont make it break the gameplay, because then noone will look for it.
Then when the user reached the end of level monster, check if there were any logged warning flags. These will not show up inside the game, so the unknowing user with a hacked edition could be playing for hours/days and suddently realize that he/she couldnt finish the game or advance to next level, because the game had a "bug". What the user didnt know was that this bug only occures on hacked clients.
Conclusion
Be smarter than the crackers. Fool them into thinking the job was done. Make a copyprotection and know that the more advanced crackers will be able to remove it. But they probably dont want to play 50 levels to check if the crack also works all the way.
Once they realize this problem, they might start to crack it too. But if you break the game up into level-packs, you can still validate between each pack download. So once you receive hacked client hash data, then just execute an exeception and crash the game on the client. Whoops the game crashed. Dont tell its because its hacked. A program error can happend. :-)
Again, its not hacker proof. But it might annoy them enough to move on to the next game. Lastly, you could also put out regular updates for the game and only the latest version should be able to "post the records" etc. so the active users would have to update to keep in the loop.
I have been doing some apk decompiling and hacking for a while (not warez, but mods and hacks mostly to the google apps and the android framework, always abiding xda-developers policies).
Once you learn to read smali, it is almost as reading the original java code (but with way more LOCs). So, any code you add to check for keys can be found and deleted or replaced. You don't even need to recompile each time to eliminate more than one (some searches do miracles to find similar pieces of code) and, even if compilation/recompilation cycles are needed to find them, it's just a matter of one or two minutes to decompile: everything is automated by apktool and even more by apkmanager.
Having said that, my suggestion to you is to implement some sort of online scoring table or similar, and when the user looks at the score table online, you can check the hash code you implemented and compare it with the associated gmail account. That way you can report the hack to google and send a nasty message to the user of the warez, explaining why that is illegal.
Of course, a new hack could be implemented to eliminate the scoring table, but that would reduce the interest for the warez.
Good luck.
Update
After researching to answer this question: Injecting code into APK (really about the Amazon DRM mechanism), I can tell a little bit on how Amazon is protecting the apps: it includes methods for checking for the installation validity everywhere (you can see an example of how they do it in my answer to that question). This will make any attempt to hack an app not very difficult, but extremely tedious. I believe that is a strong point: hackers won't want to spend so much time doing so many repetitive tasks: it's not challenging and it's boring. The main flaw I see in that approach is the possibility to hack the Amazon app itself to always return a valid answer, of course. But, if you mix your current hash checks with some sort of online check scattered among your methods, I believe the chances of it getting hacked may be drastically reduced.
Taken from my solution from this post Avoid apk cracked
Implement your own licensing library
I'd also refer you to check out this from Google I/O 2011 YouTube recording:
Evading Pirates and Stopping Vampires
EDIT:
The Presentation Notes from Evading Pirates and Stopping Vampires
Some basic keypoints
Modify the LVL
Implement LVL Tamper Resistance
Use obfuscation
Add reflection
I know you're not really into obfuscation, but I really need to react to this:
From here, I don't want to obfuscate
our code as I have seen it broken
before. I want something a little more solid, and I also want to learn how to do this properly.
ProGuard is very reliable in my experience, and this although I use a couple of advanced features such as AIDL and some native code which calls Java method.. It takes a little work to read the documentation and do things properly, but once you're there ProGuard is extremely reliable and also optimizes your app.
Custom security/cryptographic tricks are good, but without obfuscation it's like throwing a stone in the water in my humble opinion.
I've used ProGuard in production for many months, and it just works flawlessly.
If you're into learning, then read the ProGuard manual carefully, experiment with it, and inspect its output logs.
Chance, that there are more talented programmers then YOU (applies for all programmer), is 100%. And if that is true, you can not fix hacking. But you can spend as much time and effort on it to go bankrupt.
If you want to make some serious money you need to do some research on your target user group, and behavioral science. You need to make users playing that bring in new money, and thats it.
Besides, you got it all wrong. Hackers are most active members of your user base, thy just behave in a way you did not intend them to.
Take Zynga games on Facebook for example, do you think thy get hacked? - Sure, and about +100000 players only play, because thy can use bots, that automate everything.
Having huge active user base botnet of actual people, makes archiver type gamers want to play the game - and if thy play, and it looks cool, then Avarage Joe will also want to play. If Avarage Joe plays, then his friends might want to play, and thy probably will not care anything other, then being better then his/her friend, killing time or having something to chat about. Avarage Joe friends will most likely be willing to pay to be better then Joe, but rather thy would like to invest in something that makes them able to be better.
Besides if the real value is playing the game for free, then users who use the free hacked version, will most likely never would have payed for it. But thy are Avarage Joes and their friends just might. So this is like the cheapest commercial you can have. If you want to make money of your large userbase, then just make new versions of the game with small changes to levels and graphics.
Piracy will always be an issue. By in large crackers are better at playing this Security Though Obscurity game than developers.
What an interesting and disturbing question. :-) As an exercise, you might try releasing an app through Amazon; they have their own DRM mechanism; I wonder if it works any better than ProGuard...
One of the key elements in my opinion is to spread out the code so it's not all in one place. If you have a function called LicenseChecker.checkLicense() which retrieves the license and checks it, you can be sure it will be disabled promptly.
The one advantage you have is that the crackers cannot see the comments of your code (and, if you obfuscate, method/variable names), so come up with something weird. In the onCreate() of one activity, you get the license ID. In onResume(), you get another value to check it against. Maybe create a thread and do some checks there. And then, some other irrelevant piece of code (maybe the player control) might pick up the value and compare it and store the result somewhere. Then three other irrelevant pieces of code will all independently check that value and disable your application if it doesn't match.
Now I should say upfront that this can cause headache for yourself - obviously, cluttered, nasty code is harder to debug and prone to cause errors. Worst case, you create false positives in legitimately purchased applications.
And, of course, everything can be reverse-engineered - once the crackers find the place where the app is disabled, they trace back the value that's being read from. They could then trace back where it's being stored, and trace that back..... or, much easier, they can just disable the final check (which is why I recommended 3 different places, all triggering delayed). Security is only as good as the weakest link.
You will not be able to stop piracy. Your best bet is to delay the spreading of a pirated copy until the initial hype about your app has calmed down.
First, I do NOT consider myself a pro in the SW security field whatsoever, but:
I think an important thing is to let the application be dependent in some part(s) on the signature check. Don't let it affect immediately, but let it set some flags or change some values. later on, use those flags, check them, let the absence/incorrectness of them cause an exception of some kind which will terminate the application maybe. As long as the signature check is only relevant at the moment, it is easy to bypass it, to remove the line, once it touches more areas in the code, your application becomes harder (or less easier...) to hack. Also as I see it, not all checks should call the same routine for the sanction, because this will also make it easy to find the protection mechanism and terminate it.
Of course, the sanction to take in cases of illegal SW may vary, you might want to crash the application when used illegally, but you might as well want to keep it running, and only send message that asks the user to buy a legal copy of the application.
If this is just what you didn't want to hear, then I'm sorry for your time :)
Android users are just going to have accept the pain of constant phone-homes. The only secure Android app is an always-connected Android app.
This is, in large part, due to Google's refusal to lock-down the installation, like Apple has. On IOS you have to jailbreak the phone. On Android you can load any APK on a stock, factory install.
Keep some/most/all your content on the server; deliver it in chunks; validate the license/session on each call.
It will be incredibly hard to inhibit this kind ov behavior. Anything that is handled on the client-side is hackable using APK decompilation and modding, memory editing with software such as Game Guardian ect.
The only way I can see how partially getting around it, would be to make an online game instead. Or have certain functions handled online. Or if anti-tamper encryption like denuvo ever is available for Android / iOS.
I'm interested in creating companion apps to several current Android apps and was curious if there is a legal issue with using their name and/or icons from the app. Like the companion app being called Angry Birds Companion or something and you were to use a picture of the level or one of the characters, etc (I'm simply pulling from thin air so don't judge the idea, just the question, please). I know there are Strategy guides to video games that use icons and names, but I'm assuming they have prior consent. Does anyone have any factual input on this?
You would be in full violation of copyright (assuming the app owner has one) law if you used their images in your application without their approval.
Using the name is not as cut and dry. You can't use the same image of the name, just like you can't use "Android" in the custom typeface. However, I believe a name needs additional protection (like a trademark) to prevent using the same word like "Windows" or "Google."
Finally, a company or organization may choose to release a statement governing the rules of some types of images and or words of their product which give you specific rights to use their copyrighted work. Just like what Google has done with Android in their attribution policy and branding guidlines, which you can read about here and here.
You really should speak to a lawyer regarding something like this.
Advice will vary on factors such as where you are located, where the company/individual who owns the other application is located, their trademarks, their patents, their claimed trademarks, and many other factors.
I am not a lawyer, but personally I always ask for permission to use any names, logos, icons, graphics, etc before doing so. Be sure to get any authorizations in writing.
The only thing we can say is to read this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Some uses are considered fair use. Some aren't. Without a specific instance, we have no idea. Even so, don't use SO for legal advice.
I had a situation where I built an android app that utilized an ad-supported service exposed through a web site. Before I started I spoke to the owner. Essentially, he said if I wasn't going to charge for my app (which I wasn't) I could use it for free, as long as I provided some link back to his site. If I was to charge for my app, he would want to share the revenue (and I never went in that direction).
Just common sense, but if we are talking non-open source apps, the author of another pay app (or site, or game, or whatever you are gleaning from) isn't going to let you make money from their work without compensating them. Why would they? If you are building something that you will give away that will ultimately enhance the original work, maybe.
If you are truly enhancing their offering, you could potential work out a revenue sharing deal. In most cases, if there's real money to be made, the original author would just take your idea and build it out themselves.
Yes, it would almost certainly violate a trademark if you used the same or logos from the original work, and using their images / icons would be a copyright violation.
Can you suggest me any good anti-crack approaches (other than a code obfuscation), considering that the paid apps on the Market are easily cracked, and the same goes for a basic server check after a PayPal transaction?
My idea is to have one (very important for the app) Java object saved on the server, and passed to the app each time when it starts. Do you think that this sounds good ?
Note that it is more like of a theoretical question, as I am not going to implement it in an app, I am more like seeking the knowledge for this rather than a concrete solution to a problem.
Any ideas would be appreciated, even ones that you are not very sure if they are good or not. Remember, the question is for Android apps. Thanks.
EDIT: I know that there can't be an unbreakable client side application, I am asking for a good option to prevent it other than a obfuscation
No. Code stored on the server and provided for execution on the device can be grabbed and stored elsewhere such as locally. (And that's probably going to be as hard for you to implement as it will be for the attacker to patch around)
Ultimately, you have to face the fact that preventing run authorization just isn't possible on a general purpose computing platform.
Unless you move actual functionality to execution on a server requiring an individually authorized account, all you can hope for with regard to code running on the user owned device is to achieve a higher than average shade of difficulty.