AttributionSource

class AttributionSource : Parcelable

This class represents a source to which access to permission protected data should be attributed. Attribution sources can be chained to represent cases where the protected data would flow through several applications. For example, app A may ask app B for contacts and in turn app B may ask app C for contacts. In this case, the attribution chain would be A -> B -> C and the data flow would be C -> B -> A. There are two main benefits of using the attribution source mechanism: avoid doing explicit permission checks on behalf of the calling app if you are accessing private data on their behalf to send back; avoid double data access blaming which happens as you check the calling app's permissions and when you access the data behind these permissions (for runtime permissions). Also if not explicitly blaming the caller the data access would be counted towards your app vs to the previous app where yours was just a proxy.

Every Context has an attribution source and you can get it via android.content.Context#getAttributionSource() representing itself, which is a chain of one. You can attribute work to another app, or more precisely to a chain of apps, through which the data you would be accessing would flow, via Context.createContext( plus specifying an attribution source for the next app to receive the protected data you are accessing via AttributionSource.Builder.setNext(. Creating this attribution chain ensures that the datasource would check whether every app in the attribution chain has permission to access the data before releasing it. The datasource will also record appropriately that this data was accessed by the apps in the sequence if the data is behind a sensitive permission (e.g. dangerous). Again, this is useful if you are accessing the data on behalf of another app, for example a speech recognizer using the mic so it can provide recognition to a calling app.

You can create an attribution chain of you and any other app without any verification as this is something already available via the android.app.AppOpsManager APIs. This is supported to handle cases where you don't have access to the caller's attribution source and you can directly use the AttributionSource.Builder APIs. However, if the data flows through more than two apps (more than you access the data for the caller) you need to have a handle to the AttributionSource for the calling app's context in order to create an attribution context. This means you either need to have an API for the other app to send you its attribution source or use a platform API that pipes the callers attribution source.

You cannot forge an attribution chain without the participation of every app in the attribution chain (aside of the special case mentioned above). To create an attribution source that is trusted you need to create an attribution context that points to an attribution source that was explicitly created by the app that it refers to, recursively.

Since creating an attribution context leads to all permissions for apps in the attribution chain being checked, you need to expect getting a security exception when accessing permission protected APIs since some app in the chain may not have the permission.

Summary

Public methods

fun checkCallingUid(): Boolean

fun describeContents(): Int

fun enforceCallingUid(): Unit

fun equals(other: Any?): Boolean

fun getAttributionTag(): String?

fun getDeviceId(): Int

fun getNext(): AttributionSource?

fun getPackageName(): String?

fun getPid(): Int

fun getUid(): Int

fun hashCode(): Int

fun isTrusted(context: Context): Boolean

static fun myAttributionSource(): AttributionSource

fun toString(): String

fun writeToParcel(
    dest: Parcel, 
    flags: Int
): Unit

Properties

static val CREATOR: Parcelable.Creator<AttributionSource!>