Jan 18th (2021) UPDATE:
Happy New Year!
The second edition of Android Internals is now officially live! The new and improved volume I is now on sale (just six years later ;-) Added well over 240 pages from previous edition (effectively, double size), with expansive coverage for filesystems/storage, slots/update_engine/apex, logging, power mgmt, and a hardware primer noting BSP/vendor differences
THERE IS NO eBOOK available. To understand why, read here. Sorry. At least I print on recycled and eco-friendly paper.
To order: email - confectioners@(this domain) and choose method:
- Amazon: Domestic only, $99.99, please use this link so Amazon pays me back some of their exorbitant commissions..
- Int'l: $145 over Paypal (commissions and shipping :(
- Int'l BTC: 0.006 BTC (subject to fluctuations, right now it's ~$125 so fair)
Volume 2 to follow soon (really, this time). Also far greater than the original (and forever delayed) plan, with a strong focus on hardware (HAL implementations) and Android 10, 11 and 12 features.
Volume 3 (yep!) dealing exclusively with security to arrive sometime around mid-year. Jury's still out if I follow the model of MOXiI 3 and show I will be discussing actual (but naturallly patched) exploits. If you have any good Android malware samples, though, that's a shoe-in for inclusion, so please share!
Meanwhile, you might want to check out the Table of Contents, as well as updates I've made to jtrace, imjtool, and the slowly expanding Android Device Database. I've also started a changelog.
Please do not send money for the older edition anymore - It is effectively out of print (click here to read the sad story of #Vault7). The revised edition is, in effect, be an entirely new "second edition", so I am suspending the first edition sale (and it's free in PDF anyway, right here).
"Android Internals: A Confectioner's Cookbook" is a new book by Jonathan Levin, author of "Mac OS X and iOS Internals: To The Apple's Core". It is the first book to deal exclusively with the internals of the world's most popular mobile operating system. Like the OSX/iOS book, it provides an unprecedented level of detail on previously undocumented subjects, illuminating the darkest corners of the Android frameworks, native libraries and kernel.
If you are a power user, developer, kernel hacker or Android implementor - this is the book for you. An odyssey in three volumes, each focuses on a different perspective of the system. The architecture is explained through the use of detailed diagrams, examples and interactive experiments. Input, Audio and Video architectures are covered in dedicated chapters, as well as security. The necessary Linux foundations, especially in kernel mode, are also detailed.
This site is its companion web site, providing additional resources, downloads and updates.
2014/5/15 - An article detailing the HTC One M8 WeakSauce Exploit
2014/5/15 - Chapter 21 - Security - Free download L update included in book!
2014/6/28 - Dexter - DEX/OAT dumping tool for chapter 10 - Free download
2014/8/3 - Chapter 3 (Boot) Extra: Reversing Android's Aboot
2014/8/15 - Chapter 4 Excerpt - healthd and lmkd
2014/9/12 - Chapter 2 Excerpt - /data, detailed (including forensics)
2014/10/03 - Android Power Management, detailed
2014/11/19 - Andevcon talk - Security
2015/01/01 - Android application backup & Recovery
... - Notes from a Nexus 9 (Boot loader, etc)
2015/07/29 - Bin Dump (view Android IPC enpoints via /sys/kernel/debug)
2015/07/31 - Android Input Architecture (AnDevCon Presentation, from Volume II)
2015/12/01 - ART/Dalvik talk from Andevcon Santa Clara 2015
2015/12/01 - DexTRA
2015/12/02 - In A Bind - Binder/IPC Internals - the painful detail (excerpt from Volume II, Chapter 11)
2016/04/01 - JTrace - Augmented, Android Aware, Modular strace(1) utility
2018/03/04 - Reconstructing the Kindle (FireOS) /system image
2020/04/04 - ImjTool - A tool for unpacking/creating Android boot partition images - Four years later, revamped and improved!
Requests? Comments? Send J an email, to info@this domain