• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.17-22
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• 2021

The attack trend on end-users via mobile devices is increasing in both the danger level and the number of attacks. Especially, mobile devices using the Android operating system are being recognized as increasingly being exploited and attacked strongly. In addition, one of the recent attack methods on the Android operating system is to take advantage of Android Package Kit (APK) files. Therefore, the problem of early detecting and warning attacks on mobile devices using the Android operating system through the APK file is very necessary today. This paper proposes to use the method of analyzing abnormal behavior of APK files and use it as a basis to conclude about signs of malware attacking the Android operating system. In order to achieve this purpose, we propose 2 main tasks: i) analyzing and extracting abnormal behavior of APK files; ii) detecting malware in APK files based on behavior analysis techniques using machine learning or deep learning algorithms. The difference between our research and other related studies is that instead of focusing on analyzing and extracting typical features of APK files, we will try to analyze and enumerate all the features of the APK file as the basis for classifying malicious APK files and clean APK files.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.921-928
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• 2016

Over the past few years, Smishing attacks such as malicious url and malicious application have been emerged as a major problem in South Korea since it caused big problems such as leakage of personal information and financial loss. Users are susceptible to Smishing attacks due to the fact that text message may contain curios content. Because of that reason, user could follow the url, download and install malicious APK file without any doubt or verification process. However currently Anti-Smishing App that adopted post-processing method is difficult to respond quickly. Users need a system that can determine whether the modification of the APK file and malicious url in real time because the Smishing can cause financial damage. This paper present the cloud-based system for verifying malicious url and malicious APK file in user device to prevent secondary damage such as smishing attacks and privacy information leakage.

• Journal of Software Assessment and Valuation
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2014

In this paper, we propose a method for protecting Android applications against reverse engineering attacks. In this method, the server encrypts the original executable code (DEX) included in an APK file, inserts into the APK file a stub code that decrypts the encrypted DEX later at run-time, and distributes the modified APK file. The stub code includes an integrity validation code to detect attacks on itself. When a user installs and executes the APK file, the stub code verifies the integrity of itself, decrypts the encrypted DEX, and loads it dynamically to execute. Since the original DEX is distributed as an encrypted one, we can effectively protect the intellectual property. Further, by verifying the integrity of the stub code, we can prevent malicious users from bypassing our method. We applied the method to 15 Android apps, and evaluated its effectiveness. We confirmed that 13 out of them operates normally.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.9-18
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• 2019

Android Application Package (APK) is vulnerable to repackaging attacks. Therefore, obfuscation technology was applied inside the Android APK file to cope with repackaging attack. However, as more advanced reverse engineering techniques continue to be developed, fake Android APK files to be released. A new approach is needed to solve this problem. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a cryptographic hash of theprevious block, a timestamp and transaction data. Once recorded, the data inany given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. Therefore, it is possible to check whether or not theAndroid Mobile APK is forged by applying the blockchain technology. In this paper, we construct a discrimination DApp (Decentralized Application) against forgery Android Mobile APK by recording and maintaining the legitimate APK in the consortium blockchain framework like Hyperledger Fabric by Composer. With proposed DApp, we can prevent the forgery and modification of the appfrom being installed on the user's Smartphone, and normal and legitimate apps will be widely used.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.1-7
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• 2020

Android apps are mostly distributed as an apk files, and when the apk file is uncompressed, resource files such as xml files, images, and sounds related to app design can be extracted. If the resources of banking or finance-related apps are stolen and fake apps are distributed, personal information could be stolen or financial fraud may occur. Therefore, it is necessary to make it difficult to steal the design as well as the code when distributing the app. In this paper, we implemented a tool to convert the xml file into Java code and obfuscate using the Proguard, and evaluated the execution performance. If the layout obfuscation technique proposed in this paper is used, it is expected that the app operation performance can be improved and the illegal copying damage caused by the theft of the screen design can be prevented.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.293-302
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• 2015

With the attack information collected during SMS phishing investigation, this paper will propose SMS phishing profiling model applying criminal profiling. Law enforcement agencies have used signature analysis by apk file hash and analysis of C&C IP address inserted in the malware. However, recently law enforcement agencies are facing the challenges such as signature diversification or code obfuscation. In order to overcome these problems, this paper examined 169 criminal cases and found out that 89% of serial number in cert.rsa and 80% of permission file was reused in different cases. Therefore, the proposed SMS phishing profiling model is mainly based on signature serial number and permission file hash. In addition, this model complements the conventional file hash clustering method and uses code similarity verification to ensure reliability.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2015.04a
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• pp.269-272
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• 2015

스마트 기기의 사용량 증가에 따라 애플리케이션의 제작 및 배포가 활발히 이루어 지고 있다. 따라서, 애플리케이션 개발에 관한 도덕적 문제, 개발자의 재산권 보호는 매우 중요한 문제이다. 하지만 배포된 애플리케이션 파일(APK)를 디컴파일(Decompile) 및 분석을 통해 애플리케이션의 소스 코드를 얻어낼 수 있다. 특히 디컴파일 기법이 악의적인 의도로 사용될 경우에는 애플리케이션 수정, 재배포 등 위변조로 인해 스마트 기기 사용자의 정보 유출, 금전적 피해 등의 심각한 문제를 야기할 수 있다. 이러한 결과를 예방하기 위한 노력이 요구되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 디컴파일 과정을 통해 애플리케이션의 정보를 수집하고 애플리케이션의 위변조를 직접 수행함에 따라, 현재 사용 중인 예방책의 취약성에 대해 언급한다.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.39B no.5
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• pp.309-316
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• 2014

It is easy to reverse engineer an Android app package file(APK) and get its decompiled source code. Therefore, attackers obtains economic benefits by illegally using the decompiled source code, or modifies an app by inserting malware. To address these problems in Android, we propose an APK overwrite scheme that protects apps against illegal modification of themselves by using a new anti-reverse engineering technique. In this paper, the targets are the apps which have been written by any programmer. For a target app (original app), server system (1) makes a copy of a target app, (2) encrypts the target app, (3) creates a stub app by replacing the DEX (Dalvik Executable) of the copied version with our stub DEX, and then (4) distributes the stub app as well as the encrypted target app to users of smartphones. The users downloads both the encrypted target app and the corresponding stub app. Whenever the stub app is executed on smartphones, the stub app and our launcher app decrypt the encrypted target app, overwrite the stub app with the decrypted target one, and executes the decrypted one. Every time the target app ends its execution, the decrypted app is deleted. To verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme, experimentation with several popular apps are carried out. The results of the experiment demonstrate that our scheme is effective for preventing reverse engineering and tampering of Android apps.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1341-1351
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• 2015

As the popularization of smartphone increases the number of various applications, the number of malicious applications also grows rapidly through the third party App Market or black market. This paper suggests an investigation filter, Androfilter, that detects the fabrication of APK file effectively. Whereas the most of antivirus software uses a separate server to collect, analyze, and update malicious applications, Androfilter assumes Google Play as the trusted party and verifies integrity of an application through a simple query to Google Play. Experiment results show that Androfilter blocks brand new malicious applications that have not been reported yet as well as known malicious applications.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.6849-6855
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• 2014

Recently, with the increasing use of smart phones, security issues, such as safety and reliability of the use of the Android application has become a topic to provide services in various forms. An Android application is performed using several important files in the form of an apk file. On the other hand, they may be subject to unauthorized use, such as the loss of rights and privileges due to the insertion of malicious source code of these apk files. This paper examines the Android environment to study ways to define the threats related to the unauthorized use of the application source code, and based on the results of the analysis, to prevent unauthorized use of the application source code. In this paper, a system is provided using a third body to prevent and detect applications that have been counterfeited or forged illegally and installed on Android devices. The application provides services to existing systems that are configured with only the service server that provides users and applications general, This paper proposes the use of a trusted third party for user registration and to verify the integrity of the application, add an institution, and provide a safe application.