DIAS: Automated Online Analysis for Android Applications

Online program analysis aims to analyze a program as it executes. Traditional online program analysis is generally interactive and not automated. An automated online program analysis requires fine-grained yet flexible analyzing infrastructure to support. Android system, although providing many high-level debugging interfaces, lacks such functionality and is not convenient for developing automated analysis tools. In this paper we present DIAS, a flexible and extensible framework for automated online analysis of Android applications. DIAS contains an introspection monitor and many analysis modules. Based on the introspection monitor and the analysis modules, DIAS provides a set of analysis interfaces to help access various types of runtime information and performs automated online analysis. Automated program analysis is then accomplished using these interfaces. DIAS can monitor applications´ execution and understand their behavior, which is useful for profiling, debugging and security analysis. Moreover, DIAS´s analysis interface eases the task of developing new online analysis functions.