Use of Implicit intent to send a broadcast with sensitive data

The com.insecureshop.AboutUsActivity contains the following code:

public final void onSendData(android.view.View view) {
        kotlin.jvm.internal.Intrinsics.checkParameterIsNotNull(view, "view");
        java.lang.String userName = com.insecureshop.util.Prefs.INSTANCE.getUsername();
        if (userName == null) {
            kotlin.jvm.internal.Intrinsics.throwNpe();
        }
        java.lang.String password = com.insecureshop.util.Prefs.INSTANCE.getPassword();
        if (password == null) {
            kotlin.jvm.internal.Intrinsics.throwNpe();
        }
        android.content.Intent intent = new android.content.Intent("com.insecureshop.action.BROADCAST");
        intent.putExtra("username", userName);
        intent.putExtra("password", password);
        sendBroadcast(intent);
        android.widget.TextView textView = (android.widget.TextView) _$_findCachedViewById(com.insecureshop.C0818R.id.textView);
        kotlin.jvm.internal.Intrinsics.checkExpressionValueIsNotNull(textView, "textView");
        textView.setText("InsecureShop is an intentionally designed vulnerable android app built in Kotlin.");
    }
}

The above code defines an action com.insecureshop.action.BROADCAST and use implicit intent to send a broadcast containing username and password of the logged-in user.

Note (If you are exploiting this on Android version 7 and above):

On Android O, code like this no longer works the way that you expect:

sendBroadcast(new Intent("this.is.an.implicit.broadcast"));

Normally, this broadcast would be received by all receivers that are registered for that custom action string. Even on O, two sets of receivers will still receive the broadcast:

  • Those whose apps have targetSdkVersion of 25 or lower

  • Those that were registered via registerReceiver() of some already-running process

To use Implicit Receivers in your application, you need to define them programmatically in your code, using registerReceiver().

Reference:

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