A Dynamic App Anti-Debugging Approach on Android ART Runtime
Jia Xin Wan, Mohammad Zulkernine, Clifford Liem · 2018
App anti-debugging techniques can protect app behavior from being leaked to attackers, thus reducing the possibilities of being compromised. Apps are vulnerable to being debugged in an insecure Android environment such as an emulator or a device with a rooted Android ROM. Researchers have proposed various Android Runtime (ART) instrumentation toolkits to trace app behavior. However, little research has been done to protect apps from being traced by those toolkits. In this paper, we introduce an approach to help apps combat being debugged dynamically. We collect potential check points and verify their integrity to protect them from being tampered with. Weimplement the approach and present the evaluation results on Android 8. The results show that the anti-debugging approach can defeat the tracking of app behavior effectively and efficiently.