Android on PC: On the Security of End-user Android Emulators
Fenghao Xu, Siyu Shen, Wenrui Diao, Zhou Li, Yi Chen, Rui Li, Kehuan Zhang · 2021
Android emulators today are not only acting as a debugging tool for developers but also serving the massive end-users. These end-user Android emulators have attracted millions of users due to their advantages of running mobile apps on desktops and are especially appealing for mobile game players who demand larger screens and better performance. Besides, they commonly provide some customized assistant functionalities to improve the user experience, such as keyboard mapping and app installation from the host. To implement these services, emulators inevitably introduce communication channels between host OS and Android OS (in the Virtual Machine), thus forming a unique architecture which mobile phone does not have. However, it is unknown whether this architecture brings any new security risks to emulators.