Version 6.5.1 (March 2024)

Supported platform versions

• App Shielding version 6.5.1 was successfully tested with Android 14 beta 5.

• Android 5.0 (API level 21) – Android 14 (API level 34).

• Shielding Tool:

  • Windows 10: 64-bit Java 17

  • Mac OSX (10.9+)

  • Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS or 22.04 LTS

• The App Shielding Gradle plugin version 2.0 and later is supported.

  The App Shielding Gradle plugin 2.0 supports Android App Bundles and newer Android build versions.

  The plugin and documentation can be downloaded from:

  • Gradle plugin

  • Gradle plugin documentation

Android platform updates

The Android minimum supported version is 5.0 (API level 21). This version of App Shielding supports Android 14.

As of March 1, 2024, App Shielding for Android version 4.3.11.78273 and earlier are no longer supported. For more information, refer to the OneSpan Customer Portal at https://cp.onespan.com/.

Deprecations

Platform minimum supported versions

Android 4.4 (API levels 19 and 20) are no longer supported by App Shielding. The new minimum supported version is Android Lollipop 5.0 (API level 21).

Android Native Development Kit (NDK)

Google has announced that Android Native Development Kit (NDK) (r26) will no longer support KitKat (API levels 19 and 20). The minimum version supported by the NDK for r26 will be Lollipop (API level 21).

App Shielding switches to NDK r26 after its release as LTS version.

Fixes and other changes

SHAND-4073: R8 optimization with ShieldSDK-secure-local-storage

SHAND-4085: Performance improvements

SHAND-4106: Unexpected termination on Huawei and Honor devices

SHAND-4113: Issue when signing an Android app bundle with the Shielding Tool

SHAND-4146: Issue with ClassNotFoundException runtime exception on loading a layout resource file

Description: If an app uses a layout resource file that uses an app:layoutManager attribute with a "@string/..." value, the Shielding Tool wrote the layout resource file with a wrong value in the shielded app. That caused the app to lookup a class with a wrong name and thus it exited with java.lang.ClassNotFoundException.

Status: This issue has been fixed.

~~~
<androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView
android:id="@+id/example"
app:layoutManager="@string/my_layout"... />
~~~

Known limitations

The limitations described here have not yet been solved for the current Mobile Application Shielding version. Possible workarounds are described where available.

Magisk and root hider tools on new Android versions

Root hider tools such as Magisk Hide are designed to hide the fact that the device is compromised (rooted). Android has been increasingly restricted in what can be inspected and observed of the system from inside an app. This means that a rooted system with a root hider tool can be hard to detect due to missing privileges.

On Android 8+, App Shielding may not able to reliably detect a rooted device with Magisk Hide depending on the version of these tools.

New Android version with 16k page size

Google announced that Android is moving from a 4KB page size to a 16KB page size in Android15. 16KB page hardware will be available in the market in the future, as well. The current version of App Shielding does not yet run on the new Android 15 images with a 16KB page size, but OneSpan is working on updating the App Shielding native libraries to no longer assume that the page size is 4K.

Android App Bundles

The OneSpan Customer Portal support for Android App Bundles does not yet include instant-enabled app bundles.