UI Obfuscation and Its Effects on Automated UI Analysis for Android Apps
The UI driven nature of Android apps has motivated the development of automated UI analysis for various purposes, such as app analysis, malicious app detection, and app testing. Although existing automated UI analysis methods have demonstrated their capability in dissecting apps’ UI, little is known about their effectiveness in the face of app protection techniques, which have been adopted by more and more apps. In this paper, we take a first step to systematically investigate UI obfuscation for Android apps and its effects on automated UI analysis. In particular, we point out the weaknesses in existing automated UI analysis methods and design 9 UI obfuscation approaches. We implement these approaches in a new tool named UIObfuscator after tackling several technical challenges. Moreover, we feed 3 kinds of tools that rely on automated UI analysis with the apps protected by UIObfuscator, and find that their performances severely drop. This work reveals limitations of automated UI analysis and sheds light on app protection techniques.
Tue 22 Sep Times are displayed in time zone: (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time
09:10 - 10:10: Mobile App (1)Research Papers / Tool Demonstrations at Koala Chair(s): Jacques KleinUniversity of Luxembourg, Luxembourg | |||
09:10 - 09:30 Talk | Demystifying Diehard Android Apps Research Papers Hao ZhouThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Haoyu WangBeijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, Yajin ZhouZhejiang University, Xiapu LuoThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yutian TangShanghaiTech University, Lei XueThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Ting WangPenn State University | ||
09:30 - 09:50 Talk | UI Obfuscation and Its Effects on Automated UI Analysis for Android Apps Research Papers Hao ZhouThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Ting ChenUniversity of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Haoyu WangBeijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, Le YuThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Xiapu LuoThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Ting WangPenn State University, Wei ZhangNanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications | ||
09:50 - 10:00 Talk | FILO: FIx-LOcus Localization for Backward Incompatibilities Caused by Android Framework Upgrades Tool Demonstrations Marco MobilioUniversity of Milano Bicocca, Oliviero RiganelliUniversity of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, Daniela MicucciUniversity of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, Leonardo MarianiUniversity of Milano Bicocca |