Enhancing Security of Android Phones

Use of mobile commerce for commerce for conducting commercial transactions online is increasing rapidly. A wide range of wireless devices which includes mobile phones, tablets provide an easier way for mobile payments and M-commerce. Risk associated with such devices such as loss of private information is also increasing. The basic requirement for using secure M-Commerce application is a secure mobile operating system. Without a security feature or secure application on the device, it is not possible to have secure Mobile-transaction. Among many operating system used for mobile devices, android operating systems are widely used. Though Android Systems are good in memory management they are also vulnerable to security attacks. Such security attacks make the phone unusable, cause unwanted SMS/MMS (short message service/ multimedia messaging service) billing, or expose private information. There are two doors for attacker to attack a smart phone. The first is to get users to download, install, and run software that contain unethical codes such as virus, worms etc. and the other is to attack device directly by using software vulnerabillties. This paper presents security assessment for Android with an overview of security architecture for android. The Paper also list various threats to android devices and there countermeasures