A survey of malware detection in Android apps: Recommendations and perspectives for future research

Abstract Android has dominated the smartphone market and has become the most popular operating system for mobile devices. However, security threats in Android applications have also increased in lockstep with Android’s success. More than 3 million new malware samples, targeting the Android operating system were discovered in 2017. Although persistent research efforts have been to address these threats and several detection techniques and tools have been developed as a result, they all exhibit distinct limitations such that no single solution can claim to solve the Android malware problem. In this paper, we survey the main mechanisms and approaches for malware detection in Android applications. We identify the advantages and limitations of each and suggest avenues of research to advance knowledge in this regard.