A Journey Through Android App Analysis: Solutions and Open Challenges

Abstract

Users can today download a wide variety of apps ranging from simple toy games to sophisticated business-critical apps. They rely on these apps daily to perform diverse tasks, some of them related to sensitive information such as their finance or health. Ensuring high-quality, reliable, and secure apps is thus key. In the TruX research group of the interdisciplinary center for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg, we are working for about 10 years to deliver practical techniques, tools, and other artifacts (such as repositories) making the analysis of Android apps possible. In this paper, we will briefly introduce our key contributions in both (1) Android app static analysis to detect security issues, and (2) Android Malware Detection with machine learning. We will conclude by listing several open challenges that we are currently facing towards improving the analysis and security of Android apps. CCS CONCEPTS• Security and privacy → Software security engineering; • Software and its engineering → Software verification and validation.