WiP: are cracked applications really free? An empirical analysis on android devices

Konstantinos Panagiotis Grammatikakis, Angela Ioannou, Stavros Shiaeles, Nicholas Kolokotronis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Android is among the popular platforms running on millions of smart devices, like smartphones and tablets, whose widespread adoption is seen as an opportunity for spreading malware. Adding malicious payloads to cracked applications, often popular ones, downloaded from untrusted third markets is a prevalent way for achieving the aforementioned goal. In this paper, we compare 25 applications from the official and third-party application stores delivering cracked applications. The behavioral analysis of applications is carried out on three real devices equipped with different Android versions by using five indicators: requested permissions, CPU usage, RAM usage and the number of opened ports for TCP and HTTP. Based on these indicators, we compute an application intention score and classify cracked applications as malicious or benign. The experimental results show that cracked applications utilize on average more resources and request access to more (dangerous) permissions than their official counterparts.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2018 IEEE 16th Intl Conf on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 16th Intl Conf on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, 4th Intl Conf on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and Cyber Science and Technology Congress(DASC/PiCom/DataCom/CyberSciTech)
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages730-735
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-5386-7518-2
ISBN (Print)978-1-5386-7519-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Oct 2018
Event16th IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, IEEE 16th International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, IEEE 4th International Conference on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and IEEE 3rd Cyber Science and Technology Congress, DASC-PICom-DataCom-CyberSciTec 2018 - Athens, Greece
Duration: 12 Aug 201815 Aug 2018

Conference

Conference16th IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, IEEE 16th International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, IEEE 4th International Conference on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and IEEE 3rd Cyber Science and Technology Congress, DASC-PICom-DataCom-CyberSciTec 2018
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityAthens
Period12/08/1815/08/18

Keywords

  • Android
  • behavioral analysis
  • malware
  • Security
  • noissn

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