Empirical comparison of intermediate representations for Android applications

Yauhen Leanidavich Arnatovich, Hee Beng Kuan Tan, Sun Ding, Kaping Liu, Lwin Khin Shar

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In Android-based mobile computing, since the original Java source code is irretrievable from Dalvik bytecode, intermediate representations (IRs) were developed to represent Dalvik bytecode in readable form. To date, SMALI, JASMIN, and JIMPLE are all used as Android application IRs by mobile developers, testers and researchers. Here, we compare these three IRs via randomized event-based testing (Monkey testing) to determine that which most accurately preserves the original program behaviors in terms of the number of successfully injected events. As such program behaviors are critical to mobile security, the choice of IR is crucial during software security testing. In our experiment, we developed an event-based comparative scheme, and conducted a comprehensive empirical study. Statistical comparison of the three IRs' program behaviors shows that SMALI behaves closest to the original applications and hence is the most suitable for software security testing as the most accurate alternative to the original Java source code (which is usually not publicly available).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)205-210
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, SEKE
Volume2014-January
Issue numberJanuary
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event26th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, SEKE 2014 - Vancouver, Canada
Duration: 1 Jul 20143 Jul 2014

Keywords

  • Android computing
  • Event-based testing
  • Intermediate representation
  • JASMIN
  • JIMPLE
  • Program behaviors
  • SMALI

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