Guo Yao

Detecting repackaged Android applications based on code clone detection technique

With the popularity of smart phones, mobile applications are growing rapidly, especially the Android applications. These applications not only provide useful features, but also bring security and privacy issues. The plagiarist can easily crack the legitimate applications, add malicious code or change the existing libraries, and advertise them in various third-party markets. The repackaged applications not only compromise the copyright of the original authors, but also weaken the security and privacy of users. In this paper, we propose an accurate and scalable approach to detect repackaged android applications and implement a prototype system. We use the system to study more than 14,500 applications collected from Google Play market and various third-party markets. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of our approach.