Structural analysis of packing schemes for extracting hidden codes in mobile malware

Abstract

In the Internet of Things service environment where all things are connected, mobile devices will become an extremely important medium linking together things with built-in heterogeneous communication functions. If a mobile device is exposed to hacking in this context, a security threat arises where all things linked to the device become targets of cyber hacking; therefore, greater emphasis will be placed on the demand for swift mobile malware detection and countermeasures. Such mobile malware applies advanced code-hiding schemes to ensure that the part of the code that executes malicious behavior is not detected by an anti-virus software. In order to detect mobile malware, we must first conduct structural analysis of their code-hiding schemes. In this paper, we analyze the structure of the two representative Android-based code-hiding tools, Bangcle and DexProtector, and then introduce a method and procedure for extracting the hidden original code. We also present experimental results of applying these tools on sample malicious codes.