BackDroid

BackDroid: Targeted and Efficient Inter-procedural Analysis of Modern Android Apps

• Paper link: https://daoyuan14.github.io/papers/DSN21_BackDroid.pdf
• An earlier version of BackDroid had been used in our NDSS'19 paper: Understanding Open Ports in Android Applications: Discovery, Diagnosis, and Security Assessment.
• An introduction video on BackDroid is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gS_uIMd7-w

If you use BackDroid or its code, please cite our DSN'21 paper as follows:

@INPROCEEDINGS{BackDroid21,
  AUTHOR =       {Daoyuan Wu and Debin Gao and Robert H. Deng and Rocky K. C. Chang},
  TITLE =        {When Program Analysis Meets Bytecode Search: Targeted and Efficient Inter-procedural Analysis of Modern {Android} Apps in {BackDroid}},
  BOOKTITLE =    {Proc. IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)},
  YEAR =         {2021},
}

BackDroid was initially developed in a private BitBucket repo, and we are now migrating it to GitHub. We also include some binaries and scripts of Amandroid and FlowDroid for a quick comparison between them and BackDroid.

We are cleaning and refactoring the code of BackDroid to make it easy-to-use and extensible. The current version was mainly set for Daoyuan's computer and used some hard-code.

Our ultimate goal is to make BackDroid a practical and full-stack Android static analysis tool, which can run as a standalone tool and also be used as a generic SDK to support customization for different problems.

The Required Tool/SDK

1. I use Eclipse to compile BackDroid, OldFlowDroid, and TestFlowDroid.
   TODO: use Gradle to make environment-independent compilation.

2. Need these two tools to generate _dexdump.log and _dex2jar.jar from an APK:

dexdump = '/home/dao/software/android-sdk-linux_x86/build-tools/28.0.3/dexdump'
dex2jar="/home/dao/software/dex2jar/dex2jar-2.1/d2j-dex2jar.sh"

3. Android SDK used by BackDroid (already in the lib folder):

Scene.v().extendSootClassPath("../lib/android-support-v7-recyclerview.jar");
Scene.v().extendSootClassPath("../lib/android-support-v4.jar");
......
Scene.v().extendSootClassPath("../lib/android_v28.jar");
Scene.v().extendSootClassPath("../lib/android_v23.jar");
Scene.v().extendSootClassPath("../lib/android_v19.jar");

4. Android SDK used by FlowDroid:

public static String AndroSDK = "/home/dao/software/android-sdk-linux_x86/platforms";

5. I use Java 7 (Open JDK) to compile in Eclipse, but use Java 8 (Oracle) to run the code:

Scene.v().setSootClassPath("/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/lib/rt.jar");

6. The associated Python scripts have been tested under Python 2.7 but not Python 3+.

Source Folders Explained

BackDroid Related

1. BackDroid: the main source code

-- PortDetector is the main class
-- DumpAPIClass directly dumps an app class using Soot for debug
-- TestCallGraph is the old call graph generator using FlowDroid. Need to be
removed
-- analysis folder is the main analyzers
-- graph and structure folders are for data structures
-- util folder is some supporting class

2. grepApk: the script for automatically running BackDroid for experiments

-- grepCrypto.py: for crypto API related sinks
-- grepPort.py: for open port API related sinks
-- XXX_only.py: only count whether an APK contains the target sinks or not
   That is, "_only.py" means do not run BackDroid.
   A benefit of this script to to generate _dexdump.log and _dex2jar.jar.
   For example, backDroid/test$ python ../grepApk/grepPort_only.py -a . -w No         
   -a . for the current "test" folder; -w No for keeping dexdump.log and .jar

3. bin: the script for manually running BackDroid for debug

-- Require the generated _dexdump.log and _dex2jar.jar before we can run it.
-- You can understand the usage and see the examples by "cat" it.
   For example:
   backDroid/test$ ../bin/rawdroid.sh com.kugou.android 3 OpenPort
   backDroid/test$ ../bin/dotTOpdf.sh .

4. lib, test, exp, log are self-explained.

FlowDroid Related

1. flowDroid: for experiments and scripts

-- gencallgraph.sh to run TestFlowDroid for automatic experiments.
-- oldcallgraph.sh to run OldFlowDroid for manual testing.

2. TestDroid: Java code used by gencallgraph.sh

3. OldFlowDroid: Java code used by oldcallgraph.sh

AmanDroid Related

1. amanDroid: for experiments and scripts

A Running Example

Once you compile BackDroid to generate .class files, you can manually run BackDroid like the example below:

// Test BackDroid using two APKs in the test folder
BackDroid$ cd test/

// Generate the _dexdump.log and _dex2jar.jar files using the "-w" option
BackDroid/test$ python ../grepApk/grepCrypto_only.py -a . -w No // For APKs with crypto APIs
BackDroid/test$ python ../grepApk/grepPort_only.py -a . -w No   // For APKs with open port usages

// Run the main BackDroid code in the release mode ("3")
BackDroid/test$ ../bin/rawdroid.sh com.adobe.fas 3 CRYPTO
BackDroid/test$ ../bin/rawdroid.sh com.kugou.android-6362 3 OpenPort

// Draw plot files of the generated BDG graphs
BackDroid/test$ ../bin/dotTOpdf.sh .

You also can automatically run BackDroid for experiments using grepCrypto.py or grepPort.py.