Dear all,

During summer 2012, ITekia Labs members discovered a security vulnerability 
into Android Content Providers, probably already known by others. The 
vulnerability allows SQL code injection into Content Providers in spite of 
Google recommendation concerning ContentProvider security (cf. 
http://developer.android.com/training/articles/security-tips.html). We 
already alerted Google Android Security team in october 2012 without any 
response. Since, we did not identify any security patch to tackle the 
vulnerability. Thus, we decided to implement a proof of concept showing how 
to resolve the issues related to this vulnerability.

We identified two main strategies in order to implement secure Content 
Providers :

   - Bring some features like strong prepared statement to developers and 
   let them implement their Content Providers with those secure features ;
   - Implement a full class called SQLiteContentProvider that will manage 
   all database manipulations. Database creation will be the only developer 
   action.

Experience shows that developer often prefers the easiest and unsecured 
way. Therefore, 2nd solution seems to be more appropriated to guarantee a 
decent security level. However, the 2nd solution needs deep change into 
Android code Source.
More information are included inside the pdf : Content Provider Security 
Patch 
<http://www.itekia.com/pdf/F2014-234-ITekia-ContentProviderSecurityPatch-v1.3.pdf>
  
This document describes the implementation of the 1st version of 
SQLiteContentProvider that is a proof of concept for secure Content 
Provider.  It introduces a list of improvements that should be developed in 
order to implement a SQLiteContentProvider improved release.

Before submitting any request in gerrit, we would appreciate to exchange 
about the work done and suggested ideas.

Best regards,

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