Analyze sensitive information transmission with symbolic execution for Android

Abstract

Android is one of the most widely used mobile operating system, and it is subjected to various vulnerability issues. Some of them are confused deputy attack and collusion attack, where malicious applications make use of privilege escalation by colluding permissions. Symbolic execution is proposed to analyze the transmission of sensitive information such as contacts or even payment details stored in the phone. By keeping track of the execution path of an application, we may be able to detect the pattern of such attacks. The work of this project provides some groundwork for future patches to work on, upon the completion of this project, the listener is able to symbolically execute Java programs that have primitive data types, the output is shown in readable XML format. In future there should be ways to incorporate current findings into Android environment in order to analyze applications, factors like the new 5.0 version of Android should also be considered.