Multi-partitioned Bytecode Wrapping Scheme for Minimizing Code Exposure on Android

Abstract

To date, the Android has an overwhelming share of the global smartphone market and an immense number of users. However, owing to their structural problems, Android applications are more vulnerable to reverse engineering attacks compared to other mobile applications. Attacks on Android applications not only infringe on the intellectual property rights of application developers, but they can lead to the theft of private user data and financial damage. Developers have applied several techniques to protect Android applications from these attacks. One method is the packing technique. However, because the packing technique is a protection technology for the entire code, the core code is continually exposed in dynamic memory until the process terminates. In other words, if the attacker succeeds in dynamic memory analysis, the attacker may easily obtain the logic of the core code. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a scheme that makes reverse engineering analysis difficult. This is achieved by wrapping and dropping the original bytecode after separating the original bytecode, thereby resolving the problem of exposing all the original bytecodes. The proposed scheme was applied to a sample application, and the security and performance were compared with those of existing techniques.