A Novel Method of APK-Based Automated Execution and Traversal with a Trusted Execution Environment

With the rapid development of mobile embedded devices and the increasing number of users, a lot of attention has been drawn to the dynamic analysis for Android OS. In the security analysis domain, programmes' automated execution is the first and most important step. However, existent standard solutions based on Android Package (APK) had shown negative impact to the overall system, especially in behavioral coverage and memory footprint. In order to address the problem of programmes' automated execution in Android OS, this paper proposes a novel method of APK-based automated execution and traversal using GUI, analyzes Graphical User Interface (GUI) elements, and simulates user behavior. We implement a prototype tool for automated execution and traversal of lightweight applications on an ARM-based platform. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and feasible with high coverage and low overhead.