AndroShield:automated Android applications vulnerability detection, a hybrid static and dynamic analysis approach

The security of mobile applications has become a major research field which is associated with a lot of challenges. The high rate of developing mobile applications has resulted in less secure applications. This is due to what is called the “rush to release” as defined by Ponemon Institute. Security testing—which is considered one of the main phases of the development life cycle—is either not performed or given minimal time; hence, there is a need for security testing automation. One of the techniques used is Automated Vulnerability Detection. Vulnerability detection is one of the security tests that aims at pinpointing potential security leaks. Fixing those leaks results in protecting smart-phones and tablet mobile device users against attacks. This paper focuses on building a hybrid approach of static and dynamic analysis for detecting the vulnerabilities of Android applications. This approach is capsuled in a usable platform (web application) to make it easy to use for both public users and professional developers. Static analysis, on one hand, performs code analysis. It does not require running the application to detect vulnerabilities. Dynamic analysis, on the other hand, detects the vulnerabilities that are dependent on the run-time behaviour of the application and cannot be detected using static analysis. The model is evaluated against different applications with different security vulnerabilities. Compared with other detection platforms, our model detects information leaks as well as insecure network requests alongside other commonly detected flaws that harm users’ privacy. The code is available through a GitHub repository for public contribution

Exploitation and Detection of a Malicious Mobile Application

Mobile devices are increasingly being embraced by both organizations and individuals in today’s society. Specifically, Android devices have been the prominent mobile device OS for several years. This continued amalgamation creates an environment that is an attractive attack target. The heightened integration of these devices prompts an investigation into the viability of maintaining non-compromised devices. Hence, this research presents a preliminary investigation into the effectiveness of current commercial anti-virus, static code analysis and dynamic code analysis engines in detecting unknown repackaged malware piggybacking on popular applications with excessive permissions. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, it provides an initial assessment of the effectiveness of anti-virus and analysis tools in detecting malicious applications and behavior in Android devices. Secondly, it provides process for inserting code injection attacks to stimulate a zero-day repackaged malware that can be used in future research efforts

Advanced Topics in Systems Safety and Security

This book presents valuable research results in the challenging field of systems (cyber)security. It is a reprint of the Information (MDPI, Basel) - Special Issue (SI) on Advanced Topics in Systems Safety and Security. The competitive review process of MDPI journals guarantees the quality of the presented concepts and results. The SI comprises high-quality papers focused on cutting-edge research topics in cybersecurity of computer networks and industrial control systems. The contributions presented in this book are mainly the extended versions of selected papers presented at the 7th and the 8th editions of the International Workshop on Systems Safety and Security—IWSSS. These two editions took place in Romania in 2019 and respectively in 2020. In addition to the selected papers from IWSSS, the special issue includes other valuable and relevant contributions. The papers included in this reprint discuss various subjects ranging from cyberattack or criminal activities detection, evaluation of the attacker skills, modeling of the cyber-attacks, and mobile application security evaluation. Given this diversity of topics and the scientific level of papers, we consider this book a valuable reference for researchers in the security and safety of systems

Code transplantation for adversarial malware

In the nefarious fight against attackers, a wide range of smart algorithms have been introduced, in order to block and even prevent new families of malware before their appearance. Machine learning, for instance, recently gained a lot of attention thanks to its ability to use generalization to possibly detect never-before-seen attacks or variants of a known one. During the past years, a lot of works have tested the strength of machine learning in the cybersecurity field, exploring its potentialities and weaknesses. In particular, various studies highlighted its robustness against adversarial attacks, proposing strategies to mitigate them . Unfortunately, all these findings have focused in testing their own discoveries just operating on the dataset at feature layer space, which is the virtual data representation space, without testing the current feasibility of the attack at the problem space level, modifying the current adversarial sample . For this reason, in this dissertation, we will introduce PRISM, a framework for executing an adversarial attack operating at the problem space level. Even if this framework focuses only on Android applications, the whole methodology can be generalized on other platforms, like Windows, Mac or Linux executable files. The main idea is to successfully evade a classifier by transplanting chunks of code, taken from a set of goodware to a given malware. Exactly as in medicine, we have a donor who donates organs and receivers who receive them, in this case, goodware applications are our donors, the organs are the needed code and the receiver is the targeted malware. In the following work we will discuss about concepts related to a wide variety of topics, ranging from machine learning, due to the target classifier, to static analysis, due to the possible countermeasures considered, to program analysis, due to the extraction techniques adopter, ending in mobile application, because the target operating system is Android

Automating Mobile Device File Format Analysis

Forensic tools assist examiners in extracting evidence from application files from mobile devices. If the file format for the file of interest is known, this process is straightforward, otherwise it requires the examiner to manually reverse engineer the data structures resident in the file. This research presents the Automated Data Structure Slayer (ADSS), which automates the process to reverse engineer unknown file for- mats of Android applications. After statically parsing and preparing an application, ADSS dynamically runs it, injecting hooks at selected methods to uncover the data structures used to store and process data before writing to media. The resultant association between application semantics and bytes in a file reveal the structure and file format. ADSS has been successfully evaluated against Uber and Discord, both popular Android applications, and reveals the format used by the respective proprietary application files stored on the filesystem

Hooking Java methods and native functions to enhance Android applications security

Mobile devices are becoming the main end-user platform to access the Internet. Therefore, hackers’ interest for fraudulent mobile applications is now higher than ever. Most of the times, static analysis is not enough to detect the application hidden malicious code. For this reason, we design and implement a security library for Android applications exploiting the hooking of Java and native functions to enable runtime analysis. The library verifies if the application shows compliance to some of the most important security protocols and it tries to detect unwanted activities. Testing of the library shows that it successfully intercepts the targeted functions, thus allowing to block the application malicious behaviour. We also assess the feasibility of an automatic tool that uses reverse engineering to decompile the application, inject our library and recompile the security-enhanced application. I dispositivi mobile rappresentano ormai per gli utenti finali la principale piattaforma di accesso alla rete. Di conseguenza, l’interesse degli hacker a sviluppare applicazioni mobile fraudolente è più forte che mai. Il più delle volte, l’analisi statica non è sufficiente a rilevare tracce di codice ostile. Per questo motivo, progettiamo e implementiamo una libreria di sicurezza per applicazioni Android che sfrutta l’hooking di funzioni Java e native per effettuare un’analisi dinamica del codice. La libreria verifica che l’applicazione sia conforme ad alcuni dei principali protocolli di sicurezza e tenta di rilevare tracce di attività indesiderate. La fase di testing mostra che la libreria intercetta con successo le funzioni bersaglio, consentendo di bloccare il comportamento malevolo dell’applicazione. Valutiamo altresì la fattibilità di un programma che in modo automatico sfrutti tecniche di reverse engineering per decompilare un’applicazione, inserire al suo interno la libreria e ricompilare l’applicazione messa in sicurezza

Research on smart-locks cybersecurity and vulnerabilities

Smart-locks have become increasingly popular for access to homes and businesses in many countries, because of their ease of use and adaptability. These locks offer a simple and secure alternative to traditional key-based entry, making them an attractive choice for both residential and commercial properties. Nevertheless, it is essential to acknowledge the potential security threats that come with any new technology. The security of smart-locks is particularly critical, as a breach could result in unauthorized entry. Since the smart-locks can connect, there are different ways to check if vulnerabilities can be found easily or on the contrary, if the security level is high. Two of the main ways of checking the security level of this kind of IoT device are the information that can be obtained from the Android application and the security level of the Bluetooth connection. Many vulnerabilities can be found in the Android smart lock management application. This application is very useful to perform all the configurations with such a lock, but if it is not properly implemented and secured, it can provide clues for malicious users to perform unauthorized access to the system. Another security factor is the Bluetooth connection. This ensures that only authorized users have access to the property. In this work, we have analyzed the security level of different parts of smart-locks. In particular, we have analyzed the security of the applications for the most important smart-locks on the market. This study reveals relevant information such as whether the application is obfuscated or not, the encryption algorithm for the Bluetooth connection, or relevant URLs that applications use to connect to the cloud. The security of the Bluetooth connection between the smartphone application and two selected smart-locks was also analyzed. It was demonstrated that if no encryption is used for the Bluetooth connection, the smart-lock is not secure, but if AES encryption is used, the security level is high.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Research supported by the Cátedra Institucional de Ciberseguridad Binter and the Cátedra Edosoft de Computación en la Nube e Inteligencia Artificial, both from the University of La Laguna

Two-factor Authentication in Smartphones: Implementations and Attacks

Two-factor authentication is the method of combining two so called authentication factors in order to enhance the security of user authentication. An authentication factor is defined as ”Something the user knows, has or is”. Something the user knows is often the traditional username and password, something the user has is something that the user is in physical possession of and something the user is is a physical trait of the user, such as biometrics. Two-factor authentication greatly enhances security attributes compared to traditional password-only methods. With the advent of the smartphone, new convenient authentication methods have been developed in order to take advantage of the versatility such devices provide. However, older two-factor authentication methods such as sending codes via SMS are still widely popular and in the case of the smartphone opens up new attack vectors for criminals to exploit by creating malware that is able to gain control over SMS functionality. This thesis explores, discusses and compares three distinct two-factor authentication methods used in smartphones today in the sense of security and usability. These are mTAN (mobile Transaction Authentication Number), TOTP (Time-based One Time Password Algorithm) and PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). Both practial and theoretical attacks against these methods are reviewed with a focus on malicious software and advantages and disadvantages of each method are presented. An in-depth analysis of an Android smartphone SMS-stealing trojan is done in order to gain a deeper understanding of how smartphone malware operates