9.1. Permissions

Device implementations:

  • [C-0-1] MUST support the Android permissions model as defined in the Android developer documentation. Specifically, they MUST enforce each permission defined as described in the SDK documentation; no permissions may be omitted, altered, or ignored.

  • MAY add additional permissions, provided the new permission ID strings are not in the android.\* namespace.

  • [C-0-2] Permissions with a protectionLevel of PROTECTION_FLAG_PRIVILEGED MUST only be granted to apps preloaded in the privileged path(s) of the system image and within the subset of the explicitly whitelisted permissions for each app. The AOSP implementation meets this requirement by reading and honoring the whitelisted permissions for each app from the files in the etc/permissions/ path and using the system/priv-app path as the privileged path.

Permissions with a protection level of dangerous are runtime permissions. Applications with targetSdkVersion > 22 request them at runtime.

Device implementations:

  • [C-0-3] MUST show a dedicated interface for the user to decide whether to grant the requested runtime permissions and also provide an interface for the user to manage runtime permissions.
  • [C-0-4] MUST have one and only one implementation of both user interfaces.
  • [C-0-5] MUST NOT grant any runtime permissions to preinstalled apps unless:
    • The user's consent can be obtained before the application uses it.
    • The runtime permissions are associated with an intent pattern for which the preinstalled application is set as the default handler.
  • [C-0-6] MUST grant the android.permission.RECOVER_KEYSTORE permission only to system apps that register a properly secured Recovery Agent. A properly secured Recovery Agent is defined as an on-device software agent that synchronizes with an off-device remote storage, that is equipped with secure hardware with protection equivalent or stronger than what is described in Google Cloud Key Vault Service to prevent brute-force attacks on the lockscreen knowledge factor.

If device implementations include a pre-installed app or wish to allow third-party apps to access the usage statistics, they:

  • [SR] are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED provide user-accessible mechanism to grant or revoke access to the usage stats in response to the android.settings.ACTION_USAGE_ACCESS_SETTINGS intent for apps that declare the android.permission.PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS permission.

If device implementations intend to disallow any apps, including pre-installed apps, from accessing the usage statistics, they:

  • [C-1-1] MUST still have an activity that handles the android.settings.ACTION_USAGE_ACCESS_SETTINGS intent pattern but MUST implement it as a no-op, that is to have an equivalent behavior as when the user is declined for access.