Benchmarking Android Malware Analysis Tools

Abstract

Today, malware is arguably one of the biggest challenges organisations face from a cybersecurity standpoint, regardless of the types of devices used in the organisation. One of the most malware-attacked mobile operating systems today is Android. In response to this threat, this paper presents research on the functionalities and performance of different malicious Android application package analysis tools, including one that uses machine learning techniques. In addition, it investigates how these tools streamline the detection, classification, and analysis of malicious Android Application Packages (APKs) for Android operating system devices. As a result of the research included in this article, it can be highlighted that the AndroPytool, a tool that uses machine learning (ML) techniques, obtained the best results with an accuracy of 0.986, so it can be affirmed that the tools that use artificial intelligence techniques used in this study are more efficient in terms of detection capacity. On the other hand, of the online tools analysed, Virustotal and Pithus obtained the best results. Based on the above, new approaches can be suggested in the specification, design, and development of new tools that help to analyse, from a cybersecurity point of view, the code of applications developed for this environment.