Abstract
In recent years, more and more criminals tamper with APKs (Android Package) of Android phones by reverse engineering, which brings great threat to the interests of developers and users. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the protection of APK code. But with the continuous evolution of the Android system compilation mode, the protection of APK code has encountered more and more difficulties. Main code protection schemes are just for applications based on Interpretation or AOT (Ahead of Time) compilation mode, but the new hybrid compilation mode used in Android 8.0 makes it difficult for the code protection schemes to protect APK code. So we refer to the Android system source code to study the hybrid compilation process of Android 8.0. By analyzing the loading, compiling and executing flow of programs in Android 8.0, we find a way to control the compilation mode. Combined with inline hook technology, our code protection scheme effectively avoids the impact of the complicated hybrid compilation mode, restores the instructions successfully and achieves the purpose of protecting APK code.
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Acknowledgment
This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61876019 & U1636213).
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Jiang, H., Yang, K., Wang, L., Gao, J., Hu, S. (2019). A Code Protection Scheme via Inline Hooking for Android Applications. In: Vaidya, J., Zhang, X., Li, J. (eds) Cyberspace Safety and Security. CSS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11982. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37337-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37337-5_9
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