TWC: Medium: Collaborative: Extending Smart-Phone Application Analysis

这项研究的重点是创建新的技术和算法，以支持对Android应用程序的全面分析。我们已经开发了正式的技术，用于从安装图像中提取智能手机应用程序的准确模型。恢复形式化基于Tyde，这是Dalvik字节码(Android智能手机操作系统使用的代码结构)的类型化元表示形式。在开发Tyde的过程中，我们形式化了Tyde类型推断、格式错误的字节码结构管理，并创建了基于字节码“指令模板”的通用Dalvik-to-Java重定目标逻辑。Tyde及其所代表的模型被用于对应用程序结构进行深入分析，以推断可能损害用户、其数据或蜂窝或互联网基础设施的潜在应用程序行为。特别是，这些分析支持整个程序分析、反射和智能手机特定数据流分析。这种分析提供了一种方法，通过检查权限结构、组件接口以及源代码和库来源中的恶意行为信号，来评估应用程序遵守最佳安全实践或组织要求的情况。分析技术正在从真实应用程序市场中提取的大量真实应用程序语料库上进行评估。从最广泛的角度来看，这项工作为研究人员、行业和消费者提供了新的途径，以评估从智能手机应用程序市场检索到的应用程序带来的潜在危险，推动了应用程序分析的最先进水平。

This research is focused on the creation of new techniques and algorithms to support comprehensive analysis of Android applications. We have developed formally grounded techniques for extracting accurate models of smartphone applications from installation images. The recovery formalization is based on TyDe, a typed meta-representation of Dalvik bytecode (the code structure used by the Android smartphone operating system). In developing TyDe, we are formalizing the TyDe type inferencing, ill-formed bytecode structure management, and creating a generalized Dalvik-to-Java retargeting logic based on bytecode "instruction templates". TyDe and the models they represent are being used to perform deep analysis of application structure to infer potential application behaviors that may harm users, their data, or the cellular or Internet infrastructure. In particular, these analyses support whole program analysis, reflection, and smartphone specific data flow analysis. Such analyses provide a means for evaluating an applications adherence to best security practices or organizational requirements by inspecting permission structures, component interfaces, and source code and library origins for signals of malicious behavior. The analysis techniques are being evaluated on a large corpus of real-world applications extracted from real application markets. In the broadest view, this work is providing new avenues for researchers, industry, and consumers to assess potential dangers presented by applications retrieved from smartphone application markets, an advancing the state of the art in application program analysis.