[mono-android] Android SE

[Jonathan Pryor]

Personally, I'm not tracking Android SE, but that doesn't mean no one is...

The simple thing to do would be to try-it-and-see, assuming that there's an Android SE installation to try. ;-)

In the meantime, the primary question is this: does it support JITs and read+execute memory? Or is it a W^X environment like iOS? If it allows JITs, it might work. Otherwise, we'd need a pre-AOT phase like MonoTouch provides in order to execute, and that's assuming they permit native code execution in the first place.

Then there's the framework question. How much of the "application frameworks" is different? Does android.jar exist and/or provide the same API? Depending on their changes, it's entirely plausible that no existing Android apps will work, never mind Mono for Android apps, if they drastically change android.jar for security purposes...

 - Jon

On Feb 14, 2012, at 4:49 PM, chris at Terrago wrote:
> I have recently run across some information on an adaptation of the android
> OS based on SE Linux called Android SE (Secure Edition) 
> http://selinuxproject.org/page/SEAndroid here is a link . Although it
> appears to still be in a somewhat experimental stage, there seems to be some
> support for the idea that this may be the OS that various government bodies
> adopt as the standard for their Android devices. In a presentation given at
> the 2011 Linux Security Summit the author states that "Almost everything
> above the kernel is different - Dalvik VM, application frameworks ... ".
> Based on this statement and the fact that the 
> http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Technical mono project FAQ  states that
> there are problems with some applications under Fedora Core 5 when SELinux
> is turned on, I am assuming that there is little chance that monodroid will
> support Android SE in the near term. My question is: is that assumption
> correct? If so, is anyone on the team tracking the progress of SELinux
> and/or Android SE or planning to support it in the future? Thanks. 
> 
> 
> --
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