Static program analysis for detecting privacy leak in Android applications

• Main Author: Rishi Marwah
• Other Authors: School of Computer Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Software::Software engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59065
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The objective of this report is to give the reader an overview of what the author has researched and implemented as part of his Final Year Project in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. For this project the author used the Java Programming Language to develop a tool to analyze existing android applications for privacy leaks. The android operating system became the most popular operating system to be used on smart phone in 2012. It also has the largest number of applications in its application store called Google Play Store. Thus it is a prime target for hackers and malicious developers to extract private information from users. Even though while installing an android application the user can get a sense of what data the application is requesting access to, the user cannot be sure where and with what trigger the application will get the data. This project aims to solve that problem by generating a Control Flow Graph for a given android application, showing all possible paths the application could execute leading to a particular method call that could lead to potential privacy leaks. This report details the research done to help the author get familiar with the project and its requirements. The report then describes the implementation of the Java tool developed by the author and states the limitations and the conclusion of the project.