Survey of Dynamic Anti-Analysis Schemes for Mobile Malware

Jongsu Lim, Yonggu Shin, Sunjun Lee, Kyuho Kim, and Jeong Hyun Yi+

 

School of Software, Soongsil University, 06978, Republic of Korea

{jongsu253, tls09611, starj1024, krbgh205760}@gmail.com, jhyi@ssu.ac.kr

 

Abstract

With the development of the smartphone market, the smartphone application market will grow significantly. As a result, malicious code targeting smartphones is increasing exponentially. Attackers are spreading malicious apps by embedding malicious code in the app through repackaging attacks. Small-scale payment fraud and malicious files for smart banking also skyrocketed through smishing attack targeting Android smartphone users. The intelligent attack, which refers to the type of target attack, has also become fully visible. In the future, mobile payment and electronic financial crime targeting smartphone users are expected to become more popular through malicious files based on Android spreading through smishing attack and it is predicted that various irregular mobile security threats will come true. To prepare for such attacks, several analytical tools have been developed, including a sandbox tool that can analyze Android malicious apps. However, as in PC environment, we anticipate the emergence of anti-analysis schemes that can neutralize these analytical tools. Therefore, this paper analyzes the anti-analysis schemes applied to malicious applications. By supporting the analysis of malicious applications based on the results of this work, it will be very helpful to reduce the research cost of malicious code research and to create a secure smartphone security environment.

Keywords: Anti-rooting, anti-emulating, anti-debugging, mobile code reversing.

 

+: Corresponding author: Jeong Hyun Yi
School of Software, Soongsil University, Seoul, 06978, Korea, Tel: +82-2-820-0914

 
Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications
 (JoWUA)

Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 39-49, September 2018 [pdf]
DOI: 10.22667/JOWUA.2018.09.30.039