Re: [android-developers] Re: How to retrieve Intents used by installed apps on the phone

Right, you're necessarily making an approximation, and a potentially
very unsound one. But, who knows, maybe for what the OP wants,
knowing the list of possible intents is enough, he hasn't said
anything about that.

I still think that what the more sensible thing (and also off topic
for this list) to do is to dynamically monitor intents as they are
sent by apps. I could see this having potential for security
enhancing applications, or something related..

If this is the case, you'll want to look into the package manager..

kris

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Dianne Hackborn <hackbod@android.com> wrote:
> Any web browser can generate an infinite number of intents, especially since
>  web pages can use the intent: scheme to provide a detailed intent
> specification for a link.
>
> On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 10:44 PM, Kristopher Micinski
> <krismicinski@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Of potential interest along this same line is Stowaway,
>>
>> http://android-permissions.org/
>>
>> It's analysis, while necessarily static, seems to work quite well, for
>> the perhaps uninteresting cases..
>>
>> And of course, as Chris points out, you can imagine situations where
>> the user constructs intents using strings input by the user, but in
>> practice, you're almost never going to see a string for an intent
>> object that can't be reconstructed by using some global constant
>> propagation.  The exception to this case is when you have some strange
>> RPC sharing pattern, but I've never seen that.  In these cases any
>> analysis will simply fail, and usually error on the side of caution,
>> telling you you do in fact need the permission..
>>
>> kris
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Kristopher Micinski
>> <krismicinski@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 1:17 AM, Chris Stratton <cs07024@gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >> On Jun 5, 7:29 pm, Kristopher Micinski <krismicin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> >> Is there any way to retrieve the Intents used by intalled apps on
>> >>> >> the
>> >>> >> phone? For example, how do I know that one app could send an Intent
>> >>> >> to
>> >>> >> invoke Camera app or Email app or Text Message app?
>> >>
>> >>> But you could track this in the system, of course, which is what I
>> >>> assume the OP wanted to do..
>> >>
>> >> Well, you can't really detect the potential (how do I know that one
>> >> app "could") due to the potential crossovers between inputs, data, and
>> >> code represented by things like intent objects and reflection.
>> >>
>> >
>> > I spend a fair amount of time in research on static analysis of
>> > permissions in Android apps doing exactly this, ;-)...
>> >
>> > A number of other systems try to do the same..
>> > http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.148.2511
>> >
>> >> You can however detect the actual attempt as it occurs, to a degree by
>> >> watching the logs, and more substantially by modifying the platform to
>> >> in effect breakpoint Intent sending.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Right, I think that's what I said, isn't it?  I don't think I
>> > mentioned potential, just dynamically, which is, as I said, what I
>> > interpreted the OP to mean...
>> >
>> > kris
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Dianne Hackborn
> Android framework engineer
> hackbod@android.com
>
> Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to
> provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails.  All such
> questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and
> answer them.
>
>
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