Android Vulnerabilities and Anti-Malware Techniques

Android has become the most commonly used OS for the last half of decades, with 87% of Android users. According to researchers, Android Apps APK has become the most significant target of attacks; on average, more than 600,000 malware applications are distributed monthly. According to the AVTest reports, the Android OS has been facing a tremendous increase in attacks yearly. Those attacks vary in the specialization level and target, which creates a pressing need for in-depth analysis of their techniques to develop effective detection and classification tools. To detect and deter new malware definitions, traditional anti-malware, primarily based on signature-based anti-virus (AV), is insufficient as the malware keeps changing the signature pattern of its attack. Such attacks require the use of more sophisticated approaches to detect them and contain them. Signature-based AV uses a fixed set of malware characteristics to identify and categorize malware; however, malware can easily surmount it using obfuscation or encryption.

In 2013, the Obad malware was the first to outsmart dynamic detection by identifying emulators and refraining from executing malicious activities. In two thousand nineteen, the most damaging attacks exploited hardware architecture-based vulnerabilities to read memory content containing sensitive information. Traditional anti-malware, based on signature-based antivirus, cannot keep up with these attacks' constantly changing signature patterns. This underscores the need for more sophisticated approaches to detect and contain these evolving threats.

There are many types of malware tactics and approaches. Among them, one of the most widespread malware known to users is those annoying apps that keep popups and disturb device usage. Some malware takes control of the user device and starts bombarding them with advertisements, changing their default search engine, and more, such as Plankton. Over 93% of malware uses the infected device for the bot, such as Beanbot, which attacks the devices by stealing information, such as IMEI number, phone number, etc., and sending it to a remote server. It can also send high-priced SMS from the device to give remote control to the hacker via this code. The malware hidden in the app prompts users to install an update, and in this disguise, the remote-control program is downloaded and installed on the victim’s machines.

Besides Static and Dynamic anti-malware analysis, Hybrid Analysis tools like WikiLeaks use hybrid techniques that combine static and dynamic analysis. They detect permission requests and collect data using these permissions. They use static analysis to categorize the permissions attained by the app, and then dynamic analysis is used to identify the uses of these permissions for data collection and leaks afterward.

Anti-Analysis Techniques: As malware spreads, several anti-malware techniques are used to detect it. However, malware developers are also evolving and updating their ways of bypassing these techniques. The following are some of the most common anti-analysis techniques malware developers use to evade anti-malware detections.

Repackaging is a prevent malware technique, and more than 85% of malware employs techniques such as DroidDream and DroidKungFu. Also, developers nowadays embed the malicious payload as a source in the form of an app/jar file and then ask the user to install some critical App updates, which will get the user malicious payload from a remote server. Other malware uses polymorphism to change its code every time it gets updated without changing its functionality, such as Opfake. Polymorphism’s main advantage to the malicious code is exploiting the same methods but doing different behaviors via code overriding using inheritance. The interfacing is exploited to override the actual behavior of changing the code to include malicious behavior.

In summary, cyber crimes are spreading daily in the fast-growing digitalization world. New techniques and tools cover the spaces between data security application breaches and platforms. With the right action and approach, breaches can be detected.

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