A case study in open source software security and privacy: Android adware

The goal of this paper is to analyze the behavior and intent of recent types of privacy-invasive Android adware. This paper starts with a review of Android mobile operating system security. This paper also addresses the broader issue as to the pros and cons of an open source operating system in terms of security and privacy. Static analysis of malware can provide higher quality results and lead to a better understanding. This approach is used in this paper. As Android's market share is rapidly growing around the world, Android security will be a crucial area of research for IT security professionals and their academic counterparts. The upside of the current situation is that malware is being quickly exposed, thanks to open-source software development tools.