[Soot-list] Soot and Android

[Bernhard Berger]

Hi DON,

> Basically we want to do some security analysis on android
> applications. For this purpose we were trying to produce a call graph
> of the various classes.
It seems that everybody is doing security analysis for Android at the
moment. :-)

 
> Here are the problems we faced
> 1) We had to write a main class which calls various android entry
> points. Is there any alternative to this approach? We would like to
> build an analysis program which takes in android apks as input. And
> having to write a main class each time is a roadblock at least for
> now. :-)
I think there are two possibilities and which one suites better 
depends on the problem you want to analyze. 

a) Use custom entry points (for more details see
http://www.bodden.de/2012/07/26/soot-custom-entry-points/) 

b) Do a first analysis step where you parse the AndroidManifest.xml,
other configuration files and the source and generate the main-Method
 (creating Jimple is not that hard).

I think that the first approach is easier to implement but is not able
to take the component life-cycles into account. Beside of the
entries there is even more framework knowledge you have to
take into account to get a complete and correct call graph, such as
component callbacks etc.

Just my two bits.

Bernhard