Detecting Malware by Analyzing App Permissions on Android Platform: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Smartphone adaptation in society has been progressing at a very high speed. Having the ability to run on a vast variety of devices, much of the user base possesses an Android phone. Its popularity and flexibility have played a major role in making it a target of different attacks via malware, causing loss to users, both financially and from a privacy perspective. Different malware and their variants are emerging every day, making it a huge challenge to come up with detection and preventive methodologies and tools. Research has spawned in various directions to yield effective malware detection mechanisms. Since malware can adopt different ways to attack and hide, accurate analysis is the key to detecting them. Like any usual mobile app, malware requires permission to take action and use device resources. There are 235 total permissions that the Android app can request on a device. Malware takes advantage of this to request unnecessary permissions, which would enable those to take malicious actions. Since permissions are critical, it is important and challenging to identify if an app is exploiting permissions and causing damage. The focus of this article is to analyze the identified studies that have been conducted with a focus on permission analysis for malware detection. With this perspective, a systematic literature review (SLR) has been produced. Several papers have been retrieved and selected for detailed analysis. Current challenges and different analyses were presented using the identified articles.