Id	ExportedPreferenceActivity
Summary	PreferenceActivity should not be exported
Severity	Warning
Category	Security
Platform	Android
Vendor	Android Open Source Project
Feedback	https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=192708
Since	Initial
Affects	Kotlin and Java files and manifest files
Editing	This check runs on the fly in the IDE editor
See	http://securityintelligence.com/new-vulnerability-android-framework-fragment-injection
See	https://goo.gle/ExportedPreferenceActivity
Implementation	Source Code
Tests	Source Code
Copyright Year	2014

Here is an example of lint warnings produced by this check:

AndroidManifest.xml:28:Warning: PreferenceActivity should not be
exported [ExportedPreferenceActivity]
    <activity
    ^

Here is the source file referenced above:

AndroidManifest.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
  ~ Copyright (C) 2014 The Android Open Source Project
  ~
  ~ Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
  ~ you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
  ~ You may obtain a copy of the License at
  ~
  ~      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  ~
  ~ Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  ~ distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  ~ WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  ~ See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  ~ limitations under the License.
  -->

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    package="test.bytecode"
    android:versionCode="1"
    android:versionName="1.0" >

    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="10" />

    <application
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name" >
        <activity
            android:name="android.preference.PreferenceActivity"
            android:label="@string/app_name" >
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>
    </application>

</manifest>

You can also visit the source code for the unit tests for this check to see additional scenarios.

The above example was automatically extracted from the first unit test found for this lint check, PreferenceActivityDetector.testWarningWhenImplicitlyExportingPreferenceActivity. To report a problem with this extracted sample, visit https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=192708.

You can suppress false positives using one of the following mechanisms:

• Adding the suppression attribute tools:ignore="ExportedPreferenceActivity" on the problematic XML element (or one of its enclosing elements). You may also need to add the following namespace declaration on the root element in the XML file if it's not already there: xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools".

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <manifest xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">
      ...
      <activity tools:ignore="ExportedPreferenceActivity" .../>
    ...
  </manifest>

• Using a suppression annotation like this on the enclosing element:

  // Kotlin
  @Suppress("ExportedPreferenceActivity")
  fun method() {
     problematicStatement()
  }

  or

  // Java
  @SuppressWarnings("ExportedPreferenceActivity")
  void method() {
     problematicStatement();
  }

• Using a suppression comment like this on the line above:

  //noinspection ExportedPreferenceActivity
  problematicStatement()

• Using a special lint.xml file in the source tree which turns off the check in that folder and any sub folder. A simple file might look like this:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <lint>
      <issue id="ExportedPreferenceActivity" severity="ignore" />
  </lint>

  Instead of ignore you can also change the severity here, for example from error to warning. You can find additional documentation on how to filter issues by path, regular expression and so on here.

• In Gradle projects, using the DSL syntax to configure lint. For example, you can use something like

  lintOptions {
      disable 'ExportedPreferenceActivity'
  }

  In Android projects this should be nested inside an android { } block.

• For manual invocations of lint, using the --ignore flag:

  $ lint --ignore ExportedPreferenceActivity ...`

• Last, but not least, using baselines, as discussed here.