Features Extraction from Android Apps Using Reverse Engineering

In this ubiquitous age of mobile phones, Android malware is a growing threat to mobile users. The most common malware detection technique is analyzing different features that any Android app encompasses. However, malware developers have become increasingly sophisticated; hence, these Android app features can’t be revealed easily. One way to address this problem is to apply reverse engineering on the Android app executable file, which will eventually decompose the app into low-level source codes. After that, these source codes can be analyzed for subsequent identification of features, which will ultimately help to segregate malware from the benignware. In this article, a step-by-step procedure has been demonstrated to extract four important features (declared permission, intent, component, and hardware/software) from the Android app using reverse engineering. This will open a path for new researchers in this domain.