Detecting Android Malware by Analyzing Manifest Files

The threat of Android malware has increased owing to the increasing popularity of smartphones. Once an Android smartphone is infected with malware, the user suffers from various damages, such as the theft of personal information stored in the smartphones, the unintentional sending of short messages to premium-rate numbers without the user’s knowledge, and the ability for the infected smartphones to be remotely operated and used for other malicious attacks. However, there are currently insufficient defense mechanisms against Android malware. This study proposes a new method to detect Android malware. The new method analyzes only manifest files that are required in Android applications. It realizes a lightweight approach for detection, and its effectiveness is experimentally confirmed by employing real samples of Android malware. The result shows that the new method can effectively detect Android malware, even when the sample is unknown.