Android 8-9-10 Gam (2026)

# On rooted Android 8.0 adb shell su sqlite3 /data/system/users/0/accounts.db SELECT name, type FROM accounts WHERE type='com.google'; # Malicious app can add entries without UI using hidden API. End of Paper

Author: [Generated AI] Publication Date: April 2026 Abstract The Google Account Manager (GAM) is a critical system component responsible for authenticating users with Google services. Between Android 8 (Oreo), 9 (Pie), and 10 (Q), GAM underwent significant architectural changes, including the deprecation of the AccountManager.addAccountExplicitly() API and the introduction of scoped storage. This paper analyzes how these changes altered the attack surface for privilege escalation, authentication bypass, and the notorious "microG" and "Google Play Services replacement" modding techniques. We present a comparative vulnerability analysis, discuss real-world exploitation methods (e.g., signature spoofing), and evaluate mitigations introduced by Google. Our findings indicate that while Android 10 hardened GAM considerably, legacy compatibility modes in Android 8/9 left substantial gaps still exploited by custom ROMs and malware. 1. Introduction Android's security model relies heavily on the Google Account Manager (GAM) to manage OAuth 2.0 tokens, refresh tokens, and user credentials for Google apps. Starting with Android 8.0 (API 26) and culminating in Android 10 (API 29), Google incrementally restricted third-party access to account management. android 8-9-10 gam