Demystifying Hidden Sensitive Operations in Android Apps

Abstract

Security of Android devices is now paramount, given their wide adoption among consumers. As researchers develop tools for statically or dynamically detecting suspicious apps, malware writers regularly update their attack mechanisms to hide malicious behavior implementation. This poses two problems to current research techniques: static analysis approaches, given their over-approximations, can report an overwhelming number of false alarms, while dynamic approaches will miss those behaviors that are hidden through evasion techniques. We propose in this work a static approach specifically targeted at highlighting hidden sensitive operations, mainly sensitive data flows. The prototype version of HiSenDroid has been evaluated on a large-scale dataset of thousands of malware and goodware samples on which it successfully revealed anti-analysis code snippets aiming at evading detection by dynamic analysis. We further experimentally show that, with FlowDroid, some of the hidden sensitive behaviors would eventually lead to private data leaks. Those leaks would have been hard to spot either manually among the large number of false positives reported by the state of the art static analyzers, or by dynamic tools. Overall, by putting the light on hidden sensitive operations, HiSenDroid helps security analysts in validating potential sensitive data operations, which would be previously unnoticed.

ZTA: A Novel Zero Trust Framework for Detection and Prevention of Malicious Android Applications

“…Although the flashlight app's behavior aligns with the DISCOVER technique, it does not necessarily mean the app is malicious. The DISCOVER method [38] is a malware attack in which malicious code is installed on a device via a genuine app. The attack operates by gaining access to the device's operating system by exploiting a vulnerability in the legal app.…”

“…Dynamic validation is an alternative but must avoid concealed critical flows due to evasion tactics. Sun et al [38] presented HiSenDroid, a static technique for detecting hidden sensitive operations (HSOs) in Android apps. HSOs are operations that have the potential to leak or acquire sensitive data.…”