Android Application Roles

Android Application Roles

12/12/2025 Friday

Android Application Roles provide insight into how the operating system assigns privileged functions to different applications. These roles indicate which apps are designated to perform system-level duties, such as handling calls, messages, or specific types of content.

Digital Forensics Values of Android Application Roles

From a digital forensics perspective, these records can help clarify how a device was configured at a given time, what applications were permitted to perform sensitive operations, and how user actions may have been influenced by system-assigned privileges. This information becomes valuable when reconstructing user behavior, validating configuration changes, or determining whether unauthorized role assignments occurred.

When this data is combined with other artifacts, it helps investigators build a clear timeline of permission use and spot unusual or suspicious changes in an app’s behavior.

Location of Android Application Roles Artifacts

Android Application Roles artifacts can be found at the following locations:

/data/misc_de/0/apexdata/com.android.permission/roles.xml

Analyzing Android Application Roles Artifact with ArtiFast

This section will discuss how to use ArtiFast to extract Android Application Roles artifacts from Android machines’ files and what kind of digital forensics insights we can gain from the artifact.

After you have created your case and added evidence for the investigation, at the Artifact Selection phase, you can select Android Application Roles artifact parsers:

Once ArtiFast parsers plugins complete processing the artifact for analysis, it can be reviewed via “Artifact View” or “Timeline View,” with indexing, filtering, and searching capabilities. Below is a detailed description of Android Application Roles artifacts in ArtiFast.

Android Application Roles:

Role: The role assigned to this package.
Package Name: The bundle name of the application that requested this permission.

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