Android Architecture

Android is a stack of deliberate trade-offs sitting on a Linux kernel: a register-based runtime (ART) that turns your .dex into native code, a warm Zygote process that every app is forked from, a sandbox that gives each app its own Linux UID, and Binder IPC as the spine that lets those isolated apps talk to the system at all. Understand those four pieces and the platform attack surface stops being a black box.