Multi-level Isolation for Android Applications

Android is one of the most popular operating systems on mobile devices, and its usage is not going to decrease anytime soon. Although Android security has already been widely studied in the literature, its quick evolution scheme and emerging usages call for the continuation of this common effort.In particular, mobile devices are now commonly used in different contexts, like in a bring-your-own device (BYOD) environment where personal and business data are held on the same device. However, small and medium companies cannot afford the costs of a dedicated software solution allowing personal and professional data to securely coexist on employees devices.In this paper, we present a preliminary solution to address this need of isolation by leveraging hardware virtualization extensions found in current mobile processors. This solution targets chipset manufacturers and provides security and privacy protections for standard Android end users.