AndRev: Reverse Engineering Tool to Extract Permissions of Android Mobile Apps for Analysis

One of the leading and the most popular operating system for smartphones and tablets is an Android. Being an open-source platform has also become a prime target for the attackers as growing users. This paper focuses on the work done on the Android platform by performing static analysis on the permission-based framework and permission extraction tool—AndRev, which is designed. Extracted many permission-based features by reverse engineering of the Android application (apk) files using the batch-scripted tool. AndRev tool is used to decompile apks in batch mode. Features have been stored in feature vectors. Firstly, analysis is done using feature vectors to study the pattern of permissions in applications as per the category. Two categories of apks, namely general and entertainment apps, are studied with an initial dataset of 50 applications each. Secondly, do an experimental study of applications permission removal by using a reverse engineering method. Updated apks are recompiled apps, which execute on a mobile phone as the way it executes like the original app. The study consists of ten apps from Google Play with various categories. The study concludes that it is not easy to remove permission as per the type of permission and the relation of apps permission with app’s relevant functionality. Finally, performed security analysis on the vulnerabilities within the source code, and those are used for accessing resources or unauthorized permission authorization of Android apk. For the study, many vulnerabilities based features were extracted by vulnerability assessment tool Quixxi for the Android application (apk) files. The study depicts that medium-risk vulnerabilities are higher than high- and low-risk vulnerabilities. In security analysis point of view, observations concluded would be useful to future Android app developers