Scribd
Upload
280 views22 pages

Stu w02b Beginners Guide To Reverse Engineering Android Apps PDF

This document provides an overview of reverse engineering Android apps. It discusses obtaining target apps from a phone or Google Play, disassembling the APK file using tools like Apktool to view resources and Smali code. It also covers decompiling the Dalvik bytecode to Java bytecode using Dex2jar and then viewing the source code in a Java decompiler. The document demonstrates these concepts using the Santoku Linux platform for mobile forensics and malware analysis.

Uploaded by

Gore Khaa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
Download as pdf or txt
280 views22 pages

Stu w02b Beginners Guide To Reverse Engineering Android Apps PDF

This document provides an overview of reverse engineering Android apps. It discusses obtaining target apps from a phone or Google Play, disassembling the APK file using tools like Apktool to view resources and Smali code. It also covers decompiling the Dalvik bytecode to Java bytecode using Dex2jar and then viewing the source code in a Java decompiler. The document demonstrates these concepts using the Santoku Linux platform for mobile forensics and malware analysis.

Uploaded by

Gore Khaa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1/ 22

Beginners Guide to Reverse Engineering

Android Apps
SESSION ID: STU-W02B

Pau Oliva Fora


Sr. Mobile Security Engineer
viaForensics
@pof
Agenda
Anatomy of an Android app
Obtaining our target apps
Getting our hands dirty: reversing the target application
Demo using Santoku Linux

#RSAC

2
Anatomy of an
Android app
Anatomy of an Android app
Simple ZIP file, renamed to
APK extension
App resources
Signature
Manifest (binary XML)

#RSAC

4
Obtaining our target
apps
Getting the APK from the phone
Backup to SD Card:
APKOptic
Astro file manager
etc

#RSAC

6
Getting the APK from the phone
Using ADB (Android Debug Bridge):
adb shell pm list packages
adb pull /data/app/package-name-1.apk

#RSAC

7
Downloading the APK from Google Play
Using unofficial Google Play API:
https://github.com/egirault/googleplay-api
Using a web service or browser extension:
http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/
http://apify.ifc0nfig.com/static/clients/apk-downloader/

#RSAC

8
Downloading the APK from Google Play
Using unofficial Google Play API:
https://github.com/egirault/googleplay-api
Using a web service or browser extension:
http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/
http://apify.ifc0nfig.com/static/clients/apk-downloader/

#RSAC

9
Getting our hands
dirty: reversing the
target application
Disassembling

DEX Smali

#RSAC

11
Apktool
apktool -
https://code.google.com/p/android
-apktool/
Multi platform, Apache 2.0 license
Decode resources to original form
(and rebuild after modification)
Transforms binary Dalvik bytecode
(classes.dex) into Smali source

#RSAC

12
Smali

#RSAC

13
Decompiling Java Decompiler

DEX JAR JAVA

#RSAC

14
Dex2Jar
dex2jar - https://code.google.com/p/dex2jar/
Multi platform, Apache 2.0 license
Converts Dalvik bytecode (DEX) to java bytecode (JAR)
Allows to use any existing Java decompiler with the resulting JAR file

#RSAC

15
Java Decompilers
Jd-gui - http://jd.benow.ca/
Multi platform
closed source
JAD - http://varaneckas.com/jad/
Multi platform
closed source
Command line
Others: Dare, Mocha, Procyon,

#RSAC

16
Decompiling Android (Dalvik) decompiler

DEX JAVA

#RSAC

17
Dalvik Decompilers
Transforming DEX to JAR looses important metadata that the
decompiler could use.
Pure Dalvik decompilers skip this step, so they produce better output
Unfortunately there are not as many choices for Android decompilers
as for Java decompilers:
Open Source: Androguards DAD - https://code.google.com/p/androguard/
Commercial: JEB - http://www.android-decompiler.com/
Others?

#RSAC

18
Demo Santoku
Demo Santoku Linux
Santoku Linux -
https://santoku-linux.com/
Mobile Forensics
Mobile Malware analysis
Mobile application
assessment

#RSAC

20
Summary
APK files are ZIP files, can be extracted with any unzip utility
Apktool helps extracting binary resources, and allows repacking
Dex2jar converts Dalvik Bytecode to Java Bytecode
Pure Android decompilers are better
Santoku Linux has all the tools you need to reverse engineering
mobile apps

#RSAC

21
Q&A | Contact | Feedback
Thanks for listening
@pof
github.com/poliva
poliva@viaforensics.com

#RSAC

22

You might also like