Reconciling GooglePlay's security recommendations with Xamarin deployment

February 25, 2016 7801 Views Sebastian Holst

An app control that both Microsoft and Google can get behind? What about Xamarin?

First - Congratulations Xamarin (and Microsoft) - as someone who has used Xamarin personally and worked with the people professionally, I see this as a win-win-win (for Xamarin, Microsoft, and, last but not least, developers!).

To the topic at hand... One might argue that the phrase "GooglePlay security recommendations" is a contradiction in terms or even oxymoronic - but I take a different view. If (EVEN) Google recommends a security practice to protect your apps - then it must REALLY be a basic requirement - one that should not be ignored.

I'm talking about basic obfuscation to prevent reverse engineering and tampering.

Here's an excerpt from Android's developer documentation

"To ensure the security of your application, particularly for a paid application that uses licensing and/or custom constraints and protections, it's very important to obfuscate your application code." ...and they go on to write "The use of ProGuard or a similar program to obfuscate your code is strongly recommended for all applications that use Google Play Licensing." (I did NOT add the emphasis)

For those unfamiliar with ProGuard - it's a free/open source obfuscator - quite a good one really for the money ;) - but seriously - it's kind of an analog to Dotfuscator Community Edition included with Visual Studio (also for free). The point being that both Google and Microsoft have long recognized that basic controls to prevent reverse engineering need to be ubiquitously available to every developer (no one is suggesting all apps be obfuscated).

...but what about Xamarin apps targeting Android or iOS? ...not so much. ProGuard cannot obfuscate Xamarin apps - nor can any of the other native Java/Android obfuscators (including PreEmptive's own DashO). ...But (good news) Dotfuscator Professional can. ...But (bad news) it's not free. Still, if you're serious about this topic, you'd probably want something other than the "free version" on either platform. Here's a link to a PreEmptive blog post on how to protect your Xamarin apps with Dotfuscator (both iOS and Android): Xamarin Applications and Dotfuscator.

Question: Given the Microsoft Xamarin acquisition, should we (PreEmptive/Microsoft) consider extending Dotfuscator CE (the free one) to provide comparable protection to Android and iOS apps generated by Xamarin as we do for .NET apps today (and since 2003)?

Let me know your thoughts - I really do want to hear from Xamarin developers (and the app owners that employ them :).

The Secret to Effective In-App Protection

Gartner calls In-App Protection “crucial” in their July 2019 Market Guide for In-App Protection In-App Protection. The guide’s summary advises security and risk management leaders to “take due care in protecting their application clients” in order to avoid “security failure.”

This raises the question – what constitutes “due care?” Obviously, no development organization looks to recklessly expose their applications or sensitive data to attack or compromise. On the other hand, over-engineered (or poorly engineered) security controls can quickly lead to excessive development costs, performance and quality issues, and, ultimately, unacceptable user experiences. While terms and terminology may vary, there is broad consensus on how to best define “due care” for any given application/user scenario.

If you don’t follow application security closely, you might think of application obfuscation and symbol renaming as being synonymous – and with good reason. Many platforms and languages, like .NET, Java, and JavaScript have popular obfuscators that do little else--our own Dotfuscator Community Edition for .NET and ProGuard for Java are good examples. However, obfuscation is far more than symbol renaming – and in-app protection is far more than obfuscation. Much of this expansion has been driven by new security requirements, shifting attack vectors, the rise of mobile and IoT computing and, lastly, the growing recognition inside regulations and legislation of the exposure that can result from inadequately protected software.

PreEmptive has partnered with Microsoft for 16 years and we’ve been involved with .NET since before version 1.0 shipped. From that perspective, it’s hard for us to pinpoint a time where the energy and enthusiasm in the .NET community has been higher than it is now. Over the past few years, Microsoft has put together the annual .NET Conf, completely online with viewers, participants, and local events all over the world. The event is virtual and streamed live over three days.

The big news at this year's .NET Conf was the launch of .NET Core 3, the next step in the continued evolution of .NET. .NET Core 3 is a huge effort, with many moving parts, and Microsoft announced many related releases to support it. Highlights for us included:

Search for lockpicking and you’ll see that there’s no shortage of suppliers ready to serve locksmiths and hobbyists, each community having a perfectly legitimate need. Is there any reason to believe that burglars don’t shop the same sites?

Hackers are developers and they have a long history of enthusiastically embracing and adapting development (and DevOps) innovations to speed their work, extend their reach, and ship software – the only difference is that they’re more likely to use those development tools and platforms on YOUR software rather than on their own. Static code analysis tools, debuggers, and even public bug tracking databases are all go-to hacker resources.

Can you tell the difference? Exception or the norm?

Of course, everyone is “for security” in principle. The hard question that each organization has to answer for themselves is “how much is enough?” Over-engineering is (by definition) excessive, and over-engineering application security can, in fact, be devastating as overly-complex algorithms, architectures and processes can compromise user experience, degrade performance and slow development velocity. On the other hand, punishment is swift for organizations that cut corners and do not effectively secure their applications, their data and, most importantly their users and business stakeholders. Finding and maintaining that balance can be time consuming and, because you can never be sure you’ve gotten it exactly right, it can also be a thankless job.

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