• 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 Internet Computing and Services
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.61-68
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• 2019

Although the number of smartphone users is continuously increasing due to the advantage of being able to easily use most of the Internet services, the number of counterfeit applications is rapidly increasing and personal information stored in the smartphone is leaked to the outside. Because Android app was developed with Java language, it is relatively easy to create counterfeit apps if attacker performs the de-compilation process to reverse app by abusing the repackaging vulnerability. Although an obfuscation technique can be applied to prevent this, but most mobile apps are not adopted. Therefore, it is fundamentally impossible to block repackaging attacks on Android mobile apps. In addition, personal information stored in the smartphone is leaked outside because it does not provide a forgery self-verification procedure on installing an app in smartphone. In order to solve this problem, blockchain is used to implement a process of certificated application registration and a fake app identification and detection mechanism is proposed on Hyperledger Fabric framework.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.9-15
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• 2012

In recently years, repackaged malwares are becoming increased rapidly in Android smartphones. The repackaging is a technique to disassemble an app in a market, modify its source code, and then re-assemble the code, so that it is commonly used to make malwares by inserting malicious code in an app. However, it is impossible to collect all the apps in many android markets including too many apps. To solve the problem, we propose RePAD (RePackaged App Detector) scheme that is composed of a client and a remote server. In the smartphone-side, the client extracts the information of an app with low CPU overhead when a user installs the app. The remote server analyzes the information to decide whether the app is repackaged or not. Thus, the scheme reduces the time and cost to decide whether apps are repackaged. For the experiments, the client and server are implemented as an app on Galaxy TAB and PC respectively. We indicated that seven pairs of apps among ones collected in official and unofficial market are repackaged. Furthermore, RePAD only increases the average of CPU overhead of 1.9% and the maximum memory usage of 3.5 MB in Galaxy TAB.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.187-196
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• 2016

Android applications are inherently vulnerable to a repackaging attack such that malicious codes are easily inserted into an application and then resigned by the attacker. These days, it occurs often that such private or individual information is leaked. In principle, all Android applications are composed of user defined methods and APIs. As well as accessing to resources on platform, APIs play a role as a practical functional feature, and user defined methods play a role as a feature by using APIs. In this paper we propose a scheme to analyze sensitive APIs mostly used in malicious applications in terms of how malicious applications operate and which API they use. Based on the characteristics of target APIs, we accumulate the knowledge on such APIs using a machine learning scheme based on Naive Bayes algorithm. Resulting from the learned results, we are able to provide fine-grained numeric score on the degree of vulnerabilities of mobile applications. In doing so, we expect the proposed scheme will help mobile application developers identify the security level of applications in advance.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.9
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• pp.1100-1108
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• 2015

Classes.dex, which is the executable file for android operation system, has Java bite code format, so that anyone can analyze and modify its source codes by using reverse engineering. Due to this characteristic, many android applications using classes.dex as executable file have been illegally copied and distributed, causing damage to the developers and software industry. To tackle such ill-intended behavior, this paper proposes a technique to encrypt classes.dex file using an AES(Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption algorithm and decrypts the applications encrypted in such a manner in order to prevent reverse engineering of the applications. To reinforce the file against reverse engineering attack, hash values that are obtained from substituting a hash equation through the combination of salt values, are used for the keys for encrypting and decrypting classes.dex. The experiments demonstrated that the proposed technique is effective in preventing the illegal duplication of classes.dex-based android applications and reverse engineering attack. As a result, the proposed technique can protect the source of an application and also prevent the spreading of malicious codes due to repackaging attack.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.679-691
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• 2016

As vehicle started to contain many different communication devices, collecting external information became possible in IoT environment. In such environment, remotely controling vehicle is possible when vehicle information is obtained by looking in to vehicle network through smart device. However, android based smart device applications are vulnerable to malicious modulation and redistribution. Modulated android application can lead to vehicle information disclosure that could bring about vehicle control accident which becomes threat to drivers. furthermore, since vehicles today does not contain security methods to protect it, they are very vulnerable to security threats which can cause serious damage to users and properties. In this paper, many different vehicle management android applications that are sold in Google Play has been analyzed. With this information, possible threats that could happen in vehicle management applications are being analysed to prove the risks. the experiment is done on actual vehicle to prove the risks. Also, access control method to protect the vehicle against malicious actions that could happen through external network in IoT environment is suggested in the paper.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.743-755
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• 2013

In recent years, the malicious apps with malicious code in normal apps are increasingly redistributed in Android market, which may incur various problems such as the leakage of authentication information and transaction information and fraudulent transactions when banking apps to process the financial transactions are exposed to such attacks. Thus the financial authorities established the laws and regulations as an countermeasures against those problems and domestic banks provide the integrity verification functions in their banking apps, yet its reliability has not been verified because the studies of the safety of the corresponding functions have seldom been conducted. Thus this study suggests the vulnerabilities of the integrity verification functions of banking apps by using Android reverse engineering analysis techniques. In case the suggested vulnerabilities are exploited, the integrity verification functions of banking apps are likely to be bypassed, which will facilitate malicious code inserting attacks through repackaging and its risk is very high as proved in a test of this study. Furthermore this study suggests the specific solutions to those vulnerabilities, which will contribute to improving the security level of smartphone financial transaction environment against the application forgery attacks.