Within its latest Android 4.4 KitKat release Google has included a new experimental feature called Verified Boot which has been designed to prevent malicious rootkit software from embedding itself into an Android 4.4 KitKat device.
The new feature within the Android 4.4 KitKat software checks the layout of the operating system files to see if they have been tampered or changed in anyway alerting the operating system that a possible malicious rootkit might be in place if the location, layout or sizes of files within Android 4.4 KitKat have been changed.
Google has designed the new feature detect changes using a new dm-verity feature that scans the individual blocks of data on the Android file system with hashes to check that the data hasn’t been modified.
Unfortunately though modders and custom ROM developers used similar techniques used by malicious rootkits to install tweaks and enhancements to the Android OS and devices. Which in the future may cause a problem if the latest security feature Google has added to the Android operating system reports their work as malicious code.
For more information on the new Google Android KitKat security feature jump over to an in-depth article which has been written by Pulser_G2 over on the XDA Developers forum entitled : “Google Taking Aim at Device Modders in Android 4.4 KitKat.”
As more information is released by Google regards the implementation of their new Android KitKat security feature we will keep you updated.
Source: Android Authority
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