PolyScope: Multi-Policy Access Control Analysis to Triage Android Scoped Storage

TL;DR

PolyScope is a tool that analyzes Android's complex access control policies to identify potential attack operations, helping OEMs improve security by understanding the impact of Scoped Storage and uncovering hidden vulnerabilities.

Contribution

PolyScope introduces a flexible, extensible analysis tool for Android access control policies, capable of identifying attack operations and assessing policy modifications.

Findings

Scoped Storage reduces attack operations on external storage by over 50%

Partial adoption of Scoped Storage leaves vulnerabilities, with potential reduction of attack operations by over 65%

PolyScope uncovers previously unknown vulnerabilities in OEM systems

Abstract

Android's filesystem access control is a crucial aspect of its system integrity. It utilizes a combination of mandatory access controls, such as SELinux, and discretionary access controls, like Unix permissions, along with specialized access controls such as Android permissions to safeguard OEM and Android services from third-party applications. However, when OEMs introduce differentiating features, they often create vulnerabilities due to their inability to properly reconfigure this complex policy combination. To address this, we introduce the POLYSCOPE tool, which triages Android filesystem access control policies to identify attack operations - authorized operations that may be exploited by adversaries to elevate their privileges. POLYSCOPE has three significant advantages over prior analyses: it allows for the independent extension and analysis of individual policy models, understands the flexibility untrusted parties have in modifying access control policies, and can identify attack operations that system configurations permit. We demonstrate the effectiveness of POLYSCOPE by examining the impact of Scoped Storage on Android, revealing that it reduces the number of attack operations possible on external storage resources by over 50%. However, because OEMs only partially adopt Scoped Storage, we also uncover two previously unknown vulnerabilities, demonstrating how POLYSCOPE can assess an ideal scenario where all apps comply with Scoped Storage, which can reduce the number of untrusted parties accessing attack operations by over 65% on OEM systems. POLYSCOPE thus helps Android OEMs evaluate complex access control policies to pinpoint the attack operations that require further examination.