Google Decided To Block Apps From Monitoring Device Network Activity

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Android-P To Block Apps From Monitoring Device Network Traffic

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Are you a android user? 

If yes! you might have observed the apps you have installed on your phone sometimes keeps bugging you when it comes to network issues.

And most of the apps you installed on your phone capable of monitoring your device network activities without asking prior permissions. But they can't monitor your content of the network traffic but can see to which server you are connected.

Since the evolution of android i..e from V1.0-V8.1, there are no restrictions were provided by the google to block such secret monitoring activities.This can be a advantage to malicious apps to put a big hole to your privacy.

You can say its a years-old android flaw and now it is coming to end. YES!
Google has decided weed out such secret monitoring issues from Android-P on-wards.

Thread at AOSP addressing this issue

Recently google has put a wrote-up at Android Open Source Project(AOSP) addressing this issue and a fix which is being implemented from Android-P on-wards.

The developer at XDA who first addressed these changes in Android Open Source Project said

A new commit has appeared in the Android Open Source Project to “start the process of locking down proc/net.” /proc/net contains a bunch of output from the kernel related to network activity. There’s currently no restriction on apps accessing /proc/net, which means they can read from here (especially the TCP and UDP files) to parse your device’s network activity. You can install a terminal app on your phone and enter cat /proc/net/udp to see for yourself.

Also said

years-old privacy flaw will finally be coming to an end on Android. It’s an issue you’ve probably never heard of, but one that you should absolutely be concerned about. Currently, apps on Android can gain full access to the network activity on your device—even without asking for any sensitive permissions. These apps can’t detect the content of your network calls, but they can sniff any outgoing or incoming connection via TCP/UDP to determine if you are connecting to a certain server.

These are the new changes being made to SElinux rules of Android-P to restrict apps from monitoring network activity.

Some of the VPN apps which uses the attribute proc_net_vpn still have access to monitor some of the network activity.

You can also follow Google's Android Open Source Project(AOSP) at android-review.googlesource.com