File system changes in Android Nougat

Question

Ever since the first release of the Android N developer preview, I get \"permission denied\" errors when attempting to list the root directory or other system directories. The p

Answer 1

This was done for security and privacy reasons. From the bug report:

In the case of the root (/) and /sys filesystems, a directory listing is not possible.

The official answer from Google:

The behavior you're describing is working as intended. Android provides strict sandboxes that applications must run in. These sandboxes protect application data from other applications, including application metadata such as process state.

/sys and /proc are well known for leaking side channel information about processes, information which can be used to infer state about the processes. For instance, it's been documented for years that /proc access can be used to monitor for app launching, enabling phishing attacks.