Static and Dynamic Analysis of Android Malware

Static analysis relies on features extracted without executing code, while dynamic analysis extracts features based on execution (or emulation). In general, static analysis is more efficient, while dynamic analysis can be more informative, particularly in cases where the code is obfuscated. Static analysis of an Android application can, for example, rely on features extracted from the manifest file or the Java bytecode, while dynamic analysis of such applications might deal with features involving dynamic code loading and system calls. In this research, we apply machine learning techniques to analyze the relative effectiveness of particular static and dynamic features for detecting Android malware. We also carefully analyze the robustness of the scoring techniques under consideration.