Bethesda, MD — Sept. 8, 2010 — Arxan Technologies®, a leading provider of software security solutions that protect applications from attack in distributed or un-trusted environments, today announced the availability of EnsureIT™ for Android, a robust software protection product that secures mobile Android™ applications against reverse-engineering or tampering for unauthorized access, piracy and insertion of exploits.

Given the popularity of the Android platform (more than 100,000 applications now available for popular mobile devices) the open-source nature and the rapid global adoption of Android applications, EnsureIT for Android addresses the tremendous need to protect digital content and intellectual property (IP). Whether on Google’s Android Market or other Android download websites, the spotlight on Android security for applications has intensified.  Recent media reports, for instance, have cautioned against seemingly legitimate Android applications that when downloaded, have resulted in the theft of private user information.  

Google recently recommended that Android developers secure their applications as they interface with the Android Market licensing server.  Tim Bray, Google’s Android developer evangelist, advises developers to obfuscate code in order to raise the bar against hackers and pirates.  “The attacks we’ve seen so far are also all on applications that have neglected to obfuscate their code, a practice that we strongly recommend,” Bray said.  Bray suggests that “obfuscating” the licensing server’s sample authentication code makes it difficult for hackers to find the parts of the code required for bypassing the authentication process.

EnsureIT for Android features automated defend, detect and react capabilities by deploying various security techniques (called Guards) such as obfuscation, checksum, repair and anti-debug directly into the software code of each application for defense-in-depth.  This layered pro­tection of diverse Guard types provides control, trust and tamper-resistance for the application.   
“The open-source software marketplace for Android application development underscores a vital need to build in IP protection, anti-piracy and anti-tampering measures into Android applications in order to safeguard the distribution and integrity of new revenue streams,” said Kevin Morgan, chief technology officer of Arxan.  “EnsureIT for Android builds upon Arxan’s award-winning application hardening technology to authenticate, obfuscate and protect the integrity of code using a variety of proven security techniques for mobile and embedded applications.”

Specifically, EnsureIT for Android provides application hardening for Android applications that run in the Dalvik virtual machine and call into native code via the Android Native Development Kit (NDK).  The NDK  is used to implement native code languages such as C and C++ in a manner that can increase efficiency and speed by reusing existing code.

Key Features of EnsureIT for Android include:

• Tunable security for mobile platforms and their application offerings
• Layered network of protections, with no single point of failure
• Self-heal in the event of an attack by restoring protections
• Requires no changes to source code
• Support for a broad range of emulators and devices
• Support for the entire Google development platform and other Android platforms
• Support for the ARM processor

To provide greater insight on Android security challenges, Morgan will host the webinar, “Android & Security: Can They Get Along?” on Sept. 8 at 11:30 a.m. ET. 

With EnsureIT and GuardIT®, Arxan provides a cross platform software protection suite for desktop, server and embedded environments delivering a complete portfolio of application security solutions that target multiple threat vectors.  The comprehensive software security portfolio enables application providers with a single vendor to meet their security needs.  Arxan’s application hardening technology solutions are available for multiple operating systems, platforms and languages including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, .NET, Java, Mac PowerPC, ARM and others. 

For more information regarding Arxan’s EnsureIT or any of Arxan’s application hardening products, please call 301-968-4290 or email info@arxan.com.