Behaviour analysis of malware in android enabled devices using reverse engineering tools

Smartphones have gained tremendous popularity over the last few years. In this growing market of smartphones, Android, an open source platform of Google which has become one of the most popular Operating Systems. Android is mainly used in smartphones and tablets. A worrying trend that is emerging is the increasing sophistication of Android malware to evade detection by traditional signature-based scanners. As such, Android app marketplaces remain at risk of hosting malicious apps that could evade detection before being downloaded by unsuspecting users.Users store all their sensitive data and information on these devices. However, this ease of use comes at a very big price and comes with side-effects which most users are unaware of. With the increase use of mobile devices, malware is also enjoying unprecedented growth at the expense of unsuspecting and naïve users. Even though several mobile security solutions have been proposed, it is apparent that more effort is required to ensure the security of the data on these devices. The research presented in this paper is an attempt to analyze malware behavior by combining static analysis and dynamic analysis to collect and analyze data in an effort to suggest security techniques not currently found in Android-based devices. The results of this research will provide and insight into the targets and actions of malware as well as provide higher security if the techniques are coded into the Android OS.