Dynamic Security Analysis on Android: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Dynamic analysis is a technique that is used to fully understand the internals of a system at runtime. On Android, dynamic security analysis involves real-time assessment and active adaptation of an app’s behaviour, and is used for various tasks, including network monitoring, system-call tracing, and taint analysis. The research on dynamic analysis has made significant progress in the past years. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is a lack in secondary studies that analyse the novel ideas and common limitations of current security research. The main aim of this work is to understand dynamic security analysis research on Android to present the current state of knowledge, highlight research gaps, and provide insights into the existing body of work in a structured and systematic manner. We conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) on dynamic security analysis for Android. The systematic review establishes a taxonomy, defines a classification scheme, and explores the impact of advanced Android app testing tools on security solutions in software engineering and security research. The study’s key findings centre on tool usage, research objectives, constraints, and trends. Instrumentation and network monitoring tools play a crucial role, with research goals focused on app security, privacy, malware detection, and software testing automation. Identified limitations include code coverage constraints, security-related analysis obstacles, app selection adequacy, and non-deterministic behaviour. Our study results deepen the understanding of dynamic analysis in Android security research by an in-depth review of 43 publications. The study highlights recurring limitations with automated testing tools and concerns about detecting or obstructing dynamic analysis.

Keywords

• Android
• dynamic analysis
• security
• software testing
• vulnerabilities
• instrumentation