Detection and Prevention of Malware in Android Operating System

Abstract

The Internet is not safe anymore, malware can be discovered anywhere on the Internet. The risk of malware has increased also due to the increasing popularity and use of Smartphones and their underlying cost-free applications. With its great market share, the Android operating system has become a prime target for malware developers. When an Android phone is injected with a malware, it may result in compromising the privacy of the user by stealing sensitive and private information like contacts, ids, passwords, photos, call records, and so on. Compared to any other Android-based application category, games are the most preferred zone for attackers, due to the high interest of users in game applications. When an end user downloads a game, which is injected with malicious code, user data is infected without bringing in the knowledge of the user. Though, there still are not sufficient protection mechanisms or guidelines stated for end user against Android malware, this study offers a novel approach to detect Android malware in order to ensure the safe usage of Android applications. The advantage of this approach is its ability to utilize Android manifest files for the detection of malware. The availability of manifest file in every Android application makes this approach applicable to all Android applications. It can also be considered as a lightweight method for malware detection, and its efficiency is experimentally confirmed by testing and comparing the results of 50 Android games samples. Experiments are carried out using the Android Package Kit (APK) tools, and based on the experiments, different kinds of malware identification and prevention guidelines have been proposed for the safe and secure usage of the Android operating system.