GSoC 2017 Summary: ReDroid toolbox

12 Oct 2017 Roberto Tanara gsoc

This is a contribution by GSoC student Ziyue Yang, find him on Github yzygitzh.

My project for GSoC 2017 is Android Sandbox Detection and Countermeasure, which came out to be the ReDroid toolbox. This post was presented for the final evaluation of my GSoC 2017 project.

ReDroid is a toolbox for automatically detecting and countering anti-sandbox behaviors in Android apps. You can:

Before GSoC 2017 begins, my GSoC mentor Yuanchun Li discussed with me about the proposal for the GSoC project. Generally our goal was to develop some mechanism that can counter anti-sandbox techniques presented in Android apps.

GSoC 2017: First Month Progress

30 Jun 2017 Maximilian Hils gsoc

GSoC Logo

At the end of February we were very happy to announce that The Honeynet Project had once again been selected to be a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2017. Since then, there has a been a flurry of activity: We received more than 50 project proposals during the application phase, selected 14 fantastic students, set them up to work with us during the community bonding period, and now completed the first month of actual work! Now that the first tangible results are tickling in, it’s time to take a closer look at our students and see what they have achieved so far.

Improving dynamic analysis coverage in Android with DroidBot

23 Feb 2016 Roberto Tanara android droidbot droidbox gsoc

Hi there, my name is Li Yuanchun and I’m glad to introduce DroidBot, a tool to improve the coverage of dynamic analysis.
As it is the case for malware targeting the desktop, static and dynamic analysis are also used for detection of Android malware. However, existing static analysis tools such as FlowDroid or DroidSafe lack accuracy because of specific characteristics of the Android framework like ICC (Inter-Component Communication), dynamic loading, alias, etc.  While dynamic analysis is more reliable because it executes the target app in a real Android environment and monitors the behaviors during runtime, its effectiveness relays on the amount of code it is able to execute, this is, its *coverage*. Because some malicious behaviors only appear at certain states, the more states covered, the more malicious behaviors detected. The goal of DroidBot is to help achieving a higher coverage in automated dynamic analysis. In particular, DroidBox works like a robot interacting with the target app and tries to trigger as many malicious behaviors as possible.
The Android official tool for this kind of analysis used to be  Monkey, which behaves similarly by generating pseudo-random streams of user events like clicks,touches, or gestures, as well as a number of system-level events. However, Monkey interacts with an Android app pretty much like its name indicates and lacks any context or semantics of the views (icons, buttons, etc.) in each app.

Google Summer of Code 2016

19 Feb 2016 David Watson gsoc

Although it is still winter in much of the northern hemisphere, for students and open source software developers, the gradually lengthing days mean that spring will soon be with us - and of course that means another chance to potentially get involved in Google Summer of Code (GSoC).

After successfully participating in GSoC between 2009 and 2015, and having created or extended many honeynet technologies that have since gone on to become industry standard tools, we are very happy to annouce that The Honeynet Project has applied to be a mentoring organization once again in GSoC 2016.

ARTDroid: an easy-to-use framework for hooking under ART

02 Feb 2016 Cong Zheng android art dynamic-analysis gsoc hook malware

During Google Summer of Code 2015, in the Honeynet Project open-source org, Valerio Costamagna and Cong Zheng (mentor) worked on ARTDroid, an easy-to-use framework for hooking virtual-method under latest Android runtime (ART).

Introduction
We propose ARTDroid, a framework which allows to analyze Android apps without modifications to both Android framework and apps. The core technology is the library injection and virtual methods hooking by vtable tampering after getting the root privilege.

Interview with Hugo Gonzalez, Android expert and trainer at the Honeynet Workshop 2015

22 Apr 2015 Roberto Tanara android workshop

Hugo Gonzalez is a full member of the Honeynet Project, and now is pursuing his PhD at University of New Brunswick, working at the Information Security Centre of Excellence. His research interest include Malware Authorship Attribution, Android Malware and Application Layer DoS attacks.

What was your motivation to enter Information Security field, and who inspired and helped you along the way?

I started in the Linux world because a speaker in a local conference. Then I discovered the network and then network security while helping at the University IT Lab. Since then, information security became a passion. Joining The Honeynet Project helped me to understand the big landscape of infosec.

Malware-serving theaters for your android phones - Part 2

10 Jan 2014 Andrea De Pasquale android

In this post I will analyze the Android APK files that my friend Pietro Delsante from the Honeynet Project Sysenter Chapter talks about in his previous post (thank you Pietro). The files are all named “video.apk” and these are the MD5 and SHA256 hashes:

video.apk 10859e82697955eb2561822e14460463 a36ecd528ecd80dadf3b4c47952aede7df3144eb9d2f5ba1d3771d6be2261b62 video.apk 91f302fd7c2d1b8fb54248ea128d19e0 8e0a2f6b7101e8caa61a59af4fdfc5b5629b8eac3a9aafcc1d0c8e56b4ddad15 video.apk f6ad9ced69913916038f5bb94433848d 4c7c0bd7ed69614cb58908d6a28d2aa5eeaac2ad6d03cbcad1a9d01f28a14ab9

The three APKs are almost identical: they share the same certificate and much more (I will cover the differences later). I started by having a look at the first sample 10859e82697955eb2561822e14460463, this is the content of the AndroidManifest.xml file:

Is Android malware served in theatres more sophisticated?

09 Jan 2014 Felix Leder android apk decompilation malware reverse-engineering sandbox-evasion thug

Pietro wrote a nice post about him finding Android malware while visiting the theatre. Thanks to Thug (thank you Angelo) and HoneyProxy, he was able to get some interesting details about their infrastructure. I was curious what kind of malware you find in a theatre, so I quickly looked at one of the samples that he mentioned: f6ad9ced69913916038f5bb94433848d.

Virus Total already provides some nice information for Android.

The SEND_SMS permissions already gives a solid hint that this application is probably sending to premium numbers. But why would the app also need RECEIVE_SMS permissions. That sparked my interest to take it apart completely. So I dug out dex2jar and jad and decompiled it. Yes, I know, there are better tools out there, but I’m old (school). I even use Emacs for browsing the decompiled code ;) For those who like to have other tools mentioned, I’ll put some at the end of the post (please send me suggestions if you have more worth mentioning).

Malware-serving theaters for your android phones - Part 1

07 Jan 2014 Pietro Delsante android apk exploit malware thug

Some nights ago I was heading to a local theater with some (non-nerd) friends. We did not recall very well the address, so I brought out my phone (LG Nexus 4 with Android 4.4.2 and Google Chrome) and googled for it. I found the theater’s official site and started looking for the contact info, when Chrome suddenly opened a popup window pointing me to a Russian web site (novostivkontakte.ru) urging me to update my Flash Player. I laughed loudly and showed them to my (again, totally non-nerd) friends saying that the site had been owned. One of them went on and opened the site with her own phone (Samsung Galaxy S Advance with Android 4.4.1 and the default Android WebKit browser). To make a long story short, after a few instants her phone was downloading a file without even asking her for confirmation. So: Chrome on my Nexus 4 was using social engineering to have me click on a link and manually download the file; Android’s WebKit on her Galaxy S Advance was instead downloading the file straight away: interesting! However, we were a bit late and we had to run for the comedy, so I did not even bother to see what the heck she had downloaded, I only made sure she hadn’t opened it. I thought it was just the usual exploit kit trying to infect PCs by serving fake Flash Player updates, seen tons of those. While waiting for the comedy to begin, I quickly submitted the compromised site to three different services, the first three ones that came to my mind: HoneyProxy Client, Wepawet and Unmask Parasites, then turned off my phone and enjoyed the show.

Reversing Malicious Flashy Flash and Dissecting Malicious Document with Mahmud!

25 Jan 2013 Sjur Usken dubai dubai2013 flash mahmud malicious speak talk workshop

We have interviewed Mahmud ab Rahman, who currently works as an Information Security Specialist for Malaysia Computer Emergency and Response Team (MyCERT) under the umbrella of CyberSecurity Malaysia. His areas of focus are network security,botnet monitoring, and malware analysis. He is also one of the teachers for the Honeynet Workshop in Dubai 10-12 of February and will give a talk about Reversing Malicious Flashy Flash and a full workshop on Dissecting Malicious Document Attacks