A Comparative Study of Android Repackaged Apps Detection Techniques

Apps repackaging has become a serious problem which not only violates the copyrights of the original developers but also destroys the health of the Android ecosystem. A recent study shows that repackaged apps share a significant proportion of malware samples. Therefore, it is imperative to detect repackaged apps in various app markets. Although many detection technologies have been proposed, there lacks a systematic comparison among them. One reason is that many detection tools are not publicly available, and therefore little is known about their robustness and effectiveness. In this paper, we fill this gap by 1) analyzing these repackaging detection technologies; 2) implementing these detection techniques; 3) comparing them in terms of various metrics using real repackaged apps. The analysis and the experimental results reveal new insights, which shed light on the research of repackaged apps detection.