Comprehension-Driven Program Analysis (CPA) for Malware Detection in Android Phones

The DARPA APAC program gave us an opportunity to make three important technological advances a A graph database program analysis platform and a graph schema for representing program semantics that together facilitate both automation and human comprehension. b Malware analysis techniques and its incorporation in a security toolbox to provide a man-machine analysis system to detect novel, sophisticated Android malware. c An innovative library summarization technique and its incorporation in the FlowMiner tool that mines expressive, compact information flow summaries from a library for accurate and scalable partial program analysis. The challenge apps were very useful in evolving our technologies and understanding its limitations. Details of technological advances, our experiences and observations are outline in this report.