As the amount of data in the world has increased exponentially, data security and protection emerged to be one of the most important challenges of our time. Nowadays, credit card billings, medical transcriptions or invoices etc. are often sent to a person via mail or can be accessed using mobile applications. Then this highly sensitive data is stored unencrypted somewhere on the phones storage.
Hence we present FileEncytpion - An android application designed to encrypt data on your android smartphone, safely storing it in a local database and preventing unauthorized access to your sensitive files.
- The application features multiple screen views.
- The application features a setting screen where a user is able to delete completely the database.
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With Room this application uses a local database to store and read the encrypted files
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The application enables three different languages using Android resource localization & orientation localization as well as providing different UI layouts for landscape and portrait modes for all views.
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FileEncryption uses two APIs
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The work was distributed among the team members considering the strengths of each of them to make sure everyone felt comfortable with their part. Tobias implemented the database and worked on the final report . On the other hand, Tasio implemented the file encryption and the Random.org request . Meanwhile Jon Ander worked on the app translation and the UI alongside Tasio.
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The initial idea we had in the presentation didn't change during the development of the project and we feel like the end result is a good reflection of the idea we exposed three weeks ago. We had to make some small changes because of some limitations of the programming language but we don't feel like any of these changes modified the user experience we had in mind.
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Which features would you implement, what would you do differently if you were to continue this project with more time?
Supposing we want to release this app to the public there're a few changes we would make.
First, we would not use Random.org for generating random numbers. There're java functions that achieve almost as good randomness as Random.org that while working completely offline. Using this method would allow the user to use the app without an active internet connection, not raising privacy concerns about what data is the app sending or receiving during the encryption process.
Another change would be to completely remove the database from our app, and instead, use a proprietary file format where we can store all the data we're now storing in the database. This could allow users to move encrypted files to other folders, change names, or even move them between devices without losing access to their files.
When talking about security, we realized that the salt used gives away the information of the length of the PIN code used, and this could make an attacker easier to brute force. If we were to continue with this project we would use a Salt with the same length for every file so no information about the PIN is public.