Related papers: Measuring the Declared SDK Versions and Their Cons…
Due to Android's open source feature and low barriers to entry for developers, millions of developers and third-party organizations have been attracted into the Android ecosystem. However, over 90 percent of mobile malware are found…
Privacy concerns have long been expressed around smart devices, and the concerns around Android apps have been studied by many past works. Over the past 10 years, we have crawled and scraped data for almost 1.9 million apps, and also stored…
The permission mechanism in the Android Framework is integral to safeguarding the privacy of users by managing users' and processes' access to sensitive resources and operations. As such, developers need to be equipped with an in-depth…
Access to privacy-sensitive information on Android is a growing concern in the mobile community. Albeit Google Play recently introduced some privacy guidelines, it is still an open problem to soundly verify whether apps actually comply with…
Resource leak bugs in Android apps are pervasive and can cause serious performance degradation and system crashes. In recent years, several resource leak detection techniques have been proposed to assist Android developers in correctly…
Despite being one of the largest and most popular projects, the official Android framework has only provided test cases for less than 30% of its APIs. Such a poor test case coverage rate has led to many compatibility issues that can cause…
The packaging model of Android apps requires the entire code necessary for the execution of an app to be shipped into one single apk file. Thus, an analysis of Android apps often visits code which is not part of the functionality delivered…
Mobile application developers are required to disclose how they collect, use, and share user data in compliance with privacy regulations. To support transparency, major app marketplaces have introduced standardized disclosure mechanisms. In…
Mobile phones and tablets have become the most widely used computing devices, with a large predominance of the Android platform. As a natural evolution, the development of Android applications has surged and has become a major field of…
Technical debt describes situations where developers write less-than-optimal code to meet project milestones. However, this debt accumulation often results in future developer effort to live with or fix these quality issues. To better…
Android apps must work correctly even if their execution is interrupted by external events. For instance, an app must work properly even if a phone call is received, or after its layout is redrawn because the smartphone has been rotated.…
Many phone vendors use Android as their underlying OS, but often extend it to add new functionality and to make it compatible with their specific phones. When a new version of Android is released, phone vendors need to merge or re-apply…
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…
Many Android applications collect data from users. When they do, they must protect this collected data according to the current legal frameworks. Such data protection has become even more important since the European Union rolled out the…
Building Android applications reliably remains a persistent challenge due to complex dependencies, diverse configurations, and the rapid evolution of the Android ecosystem. This study conducts an empirical analysis of 200 open-source…
Android is designed with a number of built-in security features such as app sandboxing and permission-based access controls. Android supports multiple communication methods for apps to cooperate. This creates a security risk of app…
The Android ecosystem is vulnerable to issues such as app repackaging, counterfeiting, and piracy, threatening both developers and users. To mitigate these risks, developers often employ code obfuscation techniques. However, while effective…
Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world, running on more than 70% of mobile devices. This implies a gigantic and very competitive market for Android apps. Being successful in such a market is far from trivial and…
Android applications are frequently plagiarized or repackaged, and software obfuscation is a recommended protection against these practices. However, there is very little data on the overall rates of app obfuscation, the techniques used, or…
Many Android applications collect data from users. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires vendors to faithfully disclose which data their apps collect. This task is complicated because many apps use…