On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Sebastian Bachmann <[email protected]> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> okay, but thats not very good?
>
> so the dex doc says about the checksum the following:
> adler32 checksum of the rest of the file (everything but magic and
> this field); used to detect file corruption
>
> so why the dalivkvm does not check it? i mean ok, it takes some time
> but what if there is a real corruption?

I assume because it takes time. suppose there was a problem in
/system, the files are readonly and better not be wrong or else
something more serious is wrong that can be fixed after detecting the
problem. if there is a problem with an app in /data, the user can
uninstall/reinstall. i do think package manager takes other steps to
ensure there aren't partially updated files. if the original APK
itself is wrong, the app author is just hurting themselves. if your
point is that malware is taking valid apks and messing with them and
resulting in invalid checksums, it might be an interesting signal, but
if we fixed that, they'd just change their tools to just fix the
checksum. it's not adding anything really.

> so what could probably be done with this? A wrong checksum just forces
> a creation of a new odex? nothing more?

not a wrong checksum, just a changed checksum.

-bri

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