Obfuscapk: An open-source black-box obfuscation tool for Android apps

Abstract

Obfuscapk is an open-source automatic obfuscation tool for Android apps that works in a black-box fashion (i.e., it does not need the app source code). Obfuscapk supports advanced obfuscation features and has a modular architecture that could be straightforwardly extended to support new obfuscation techniques. This paper introduces the architecture, the main obfuscation techniques implemented in Obfuscapk, as well as the basics of the Obfuscapk CLI. Finally, the paper discusses an actual use-case for Obfuscapk, and an empirical assessment on the reliability of the tool on a set of 1000 “most downloaded” APKs from the Google Play Store.

Keywords

• Android
• Obfuscation
• Program analysis