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Protecting Android Apps from Repackaging Using Native Code

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Foundations and Practice of Security (FPS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 12056))

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Abstract

Android app repacking allows malicious actors to modify apps, bundle them with malware or steal revenue. Current detection mechanisms of app distribution services are questionable in their effectiveness, and other proposed repackaging protection schemes do not have the necessary protection against circumvention. We propose a repackaging protection architecture that verifies the app’s integrity at runtime. We make use of encrypted sections of bytecode that can be decrypted with a key derived at runtime. The method partially relies on native code, and as such is difficult to circumvent. We show that our implementation provides a practical integration in the workflow of an app developer.

The authors of this paper are alphabetically ordered.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://source.android.com/security/reports/Android_WhitePaper_Final_02092016.pdf.

  2. 2.

    https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_Security_2017_Report_Final.pdf.

  3. 3.

    https://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/04/24/falaseguide-misleads-users-googleplay/.

  4. 4.

    https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-wirex-botnet/.

  5. 5.

    The source code is provided at https://github.com/ilian/repackaging-protection.

  6. 6.

    https://github.com/Sable/soot.

  7. 7.

    https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/dex-format.

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter/blob/master/references/domas_breaking_the_x86_isa_wp.pdf.

  9. 9.

    https://f-droid.org/en/.

  10. 10.

    https://developer.android.com/studio/test/monkey.

  11. 11.

    https://github.com/Sable/soot/issues/969.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Simon Tanner, Ilian Vogels & Roger Wattenhofer

Authors
  1. Simon Tanner
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  2. Ilian Vogels
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  3. Roger Wattenhofer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simon Tanner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paul Sabatier (CNRS IRIT), Toulouse, France

    Abdelmalek Benzekri

  2. Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Michel Barbeau

  3. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Guang Gong

  4. Université Paul Sabatier (CNRS IRIT), Toulouse, France

    Romain Laborde

  5. Telecom SudParis, IMT, Palaiseau, France

    Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro

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Tanner, S., Vogels, I., Wattenhofer, R. (2020). Protecting Android Apps from Repackaging Using Native Code. In: Benzekri, A., Barbeau, M., Gong, G., Laborde, R., Garcia-Alfaro, J. (eds) Foundations and Practice of Security. FPS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12056. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45371-8_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45371-8_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45370-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45371-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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