Platform-Centric Android Monitoring---Modular and Efficient

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular Android monitoring add-on that intercepts app interactions without modifying the platform, offering a flexible tool for enhancing system security and other applications.

Contribution

It presents a modular, non-intrusive Android monitoring solution capable of intercepting interactions in a human-readable format, suitable for runtime verification and security enhancement.

Findings

Performance penalty comparable to existing tools

Modular design allows inclusion in running systems

Potential applications in runtime verification and security

Abstract

We present an add-on for the Android platform, capable of intercepting nearly all interactions between apps or apps with the platform, including arguments of method invocations in a human-readable format. A preliminary performance evaluation shows that the performance penalty of our solution is roughly comparable with similar tools in that area. The advantage of our solution, however, is that it is truly modular in the sense that we do not actually modify the Android platform itself, and can include it even with an already running system. Possible uses of such an add-on are manifold; we discuss one from the area of runtime verification that aims at improving system security.