Empirical comparison of intermediate representations for Android applications

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).