Analysis and Detection of Malicious Behaviors in Repackaged Android Applications

Context Over the past decades malware authorship grew to become a profession. Nowadays, there exists a plethora of malware instances that span various targets, structures, motivations, and objectives [1]. Despite the different objectives they pursue, the majority of malware authors strive to prolong the period of time their instances remain operational within the infected system. In this context, malware instances are designed to evade the detection mechanisms employed by antiviral software. It is, therefore, not uncommon for modern malware to obfuscate its internal structure, alter its runtime behavior, trigger its malicious intents upon the realization of preset conditions or mimic the behavior of a benign application to evade detection [4].