A Longitudinal Study of Cryptographic API: a Decade of Android Malware

TL;DR

This longitudinal study analyzes cryptographic API usage in over 600,000 Android apps from 2012 to 2020, revealing trends in malware cryptography and improving detection methods.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of cryptographic API use in Android malware over a decade, highlighting evolving patterns and their implications.

Findings

Widespread use of weak hash functions in malware

Transition from DES to AES encryption over time

Cryptography features enhance malware detection accuracy

Abstract

Cryptography has been extensively used in Android applications to guarantee secure communications, conceal critical data from reverse engineering, or ensure mobile users' privacy. Various system-based and third-party libraries for Android provide cryptographic functionalities, and previous works mainly explored the misuse of cryptographic API in benign applications. However, the role of cryptographic API has not yet been explored in Android malware. This paper performs a comprehensive, longitudinal analysis of cryptographic API in Android malware. In particular, we analyzed $603\,937$ Android applications (half of them malicious, half benign) released between $2012$ and $2020$, gathering more than 1 million cryptographic API expressions. Our results reveal intriguing trends and insights on how and why cryptography is employed in Android malware. For instance, we point out the widespread use of weak hash functions and the late transition from insecure DES to AES. Additionally, we show that cryptography-related characteristics can help to improve the performance of learning-based systems in detecting malicious applications.