1

When opening the Android Task Manager a list of all running applications is shown in combination with an image of the current state of the application. Is it possible for malicious applications to access these images?

JohN
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
    What do you mean with "malicious"? Every app that has access to the layout of other apps (Keyboards, Ease of Access etc.) can see those preview images. Remember they are only stored in RAM so apps that search your images won't find anything. – GiantTree Jul 13 '15 at 17:35
  • Tanks for your answer. I'm just curious, if other, independent, applications are able to access these preview images. Imagine an application where usernames and passwords are stored. If these credentials are shown in the preview image, is another application able to extract that preview image? – JohN Jul 14 '15 at 12:00
  • Yes, but only the image. And the app has to be running. Imagine some overlay application (screen dimmer etc.) can access the whole screen, but if the password is hidden by asterisks ("*") it can't read that password. Even more, those apps don't have access to the text or the layout, only the resulting image like a screenshot. – GiantTree Jul 14 '15 at 12:04
  • So it is only possible if the application is in foreground? What I'm curious about is if it is possible to extract the preview image even if the Task Manager and the application are not in foreground. – JohN Jul 14 '15 at 12:14
  • It is only possible if you the Task Manager or the app is on the foreground. What is not on the screen can't be captured by any other app. – GiantTree Jul 14 '15 at 12:24
  • :) thanks! that's what i wanted to know. But the preview images must be somewhere in the RAM, aren't they? What happens if the device is rooted? – JohN Jul 14 '15 at 12:32
  • If the device is rooted, you have to trust the apps that ask for superuser permission. Any app with superuser permission can create a RAM dump. But reading that dump is close to impossible, dealing with compression, fragmentation address space randomization, image formats etc. – GiantTree Jul 14 '15 at 12:42
  • now everything is clear :) thank you very much! – JohN Jul 14 '15 at 12:47

0 Answers0