Hooker: Automated Dynamic Analysis of Android Applications

About Hooker

Functional Description

Hooker is an opensource project for dynamic analyses of Android applications. This project provides various tools and applications that can be use to automaticaly intercept and modify any API calls made by a targeted application.

It leverages Android Substrate framework to intercept these calls and aggregate all their contextual information (parameters, returned values, ...). Collected information can either be stored in a distributed database (e.g. ElasticSearch) or in json files.

A set of python scripts is also provided to automatize the execution of an analysis to collect any API calls made by a set of applications.

Technical Description

Hooker is made of multiple modules:

APK-instrumenter is an Android application that must be installed prior to the analysis on an Android device (for instance, an emulator).
hooker_xp is a python tool that can be use to control the android device and trigger the installation and stimulation of an application on it.
hooker_analysis is a python script that can be use to collect results stored in the elasticsearch database.
tools/APK-contactGenerator is an Android application that is automatically installed on the Android device by hooker_xp to inject fake contact informations.
tools/apk_retriever is a Python tool that can be use to download APKs from various online public Android markets.
tools/emulatorCreator is a script that can be use to prepare an emulator. You'll have to edit this script in order to specify your SDK home and stuff.

More Information

Website: https://github.com/AndroidHooker/hooker
FAQ is available here
Bug Tracker: Bug and feature requests are organized in GitHub Issues
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: Follow authors account (@Tibapbedoum and @Lapeluche)

Getting Started

We developped Hooker using our Debian 64-bits computers and as so, it may fail to execute properly on other systems due to improper paths or parameters. Your help to identify those incompatibilities is highly appreciated. Please report an issue in our Bug Tracker if you meet any error while using it.

In order to use Hooker you need at least one server on which you've installed:

python 2.7,
elasticsearch 1.1.1,
android SDK API16 (Android 4.1.2),
androguard 1.9.

Setup your ElasticSearch Host

This step is related the elastic search installation. Please download and follow elasticsearch online documentation: http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/elkdownloads/. You can either install the elasticsearch on a single host or deploy a cluster of elasticsearch nodes.

Setup Android SDK

You can download Android bundle here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. If you want to use the Hooker install script, you have to:

Make sure to set your ANDROID_HOME environment variable: $ export ANDROID_HOME=/path/to/your/sdk/folder
Download SDK APIs from your SDK manager (Hooker has been tested with API 16, but should work with more recent versions).

Build your reference Android Virtual Device (AVD)

Create a new AVD from scratch. If you want to fit our experience, please choose the following parameters:
- Nexus One,
- Target: Android 4.1.2,
- Memory option: 512 Mb,
- Internal Storage: 500 Mb,
- SDCard: 500 Mb (you must have an SDcard storage if you want Hooker to work properly),
- Enable snapshot,
Launch your new AVD with: Save to snapshot,
Run script tools/emulatorCreator/prepareEmulator.sh to install and prepare your emulator,
In your android system:
- disable the lockscreen security: Menu > System Settings > Security > Screen lock > None,
- open superuser app, validate Okay and quit,
- open substrate app, click Link Substrate Files, allow substrate, and reclick on Link substrate Files. Then click Restart System (Soft),
Wait for system to start properly and close the emulator,
Your reference AVD is now ready!

Configure the host where Hooker is executed

If your elasticsearch host is on a different host than your android emulator, you will need to redirect traffic throw network. In order to do this, you can use socat:

$ socat -s -v TCP4-LISTEN:9200,fork,ignoreeof,reuseaddr TCP4:192.168.98.11:9200,ignoreeof

If you have an error concerning OpenGLES emulation (Could not load OpenGLES emulation library), you have to edit your ldconfig (as root):

# echo "/path/to/your/sdk/tools/lib" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/android.conf
# ldconfig

Play HOOKER

Playing with real devices

If you want to use Hooker on real devices, please read first the specific README.

Installation

An install script is provided to help you build and install all necessary dependances. If you want to use this script, make sure you have the following dependances:

# openjdk-6-jdk, ant, python-setuptools (just apt install them)

When you are all set, run install script in the Hooker root directory:

$ ./install.sh

You then need to install application APK-instrumenter on your reference AVD:

Launch your new AVD with: Save to snapshot option checked,
Install the application using adb $ $ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools/adb install APK-instrumenter/bin/ApkInstrumenterActivity-debug.apk
When the application is installed, open substrate app and click Restart System (Soft). You can then close your AVD.

Setup your configuration file

If you want to make a manual analysis, copy file hooker_xp/sampleManualAnalysis.conf,
If you want to make an automatic analysis, copy file hooker_xp/sampleAutomaticAnalysis.conf,
If you want to make an analysis on real devices, copy one of the *RealDevice* configuration files,
Depending on your system configuration, customize the different parameters declared in retained configuration file. Sample configuration files are verbose++, so please read comments,
In relation with previous steps, you need to specify the path to your reference AVD you just built. As the comments explain it, just put the path + name of AVD, i.e. without the .avd extension.

Run your Experiment

Python experiment script is in hooker_xp directory:

$ cd hooker_xp && python hooker_xp.py -c yourAnalysisConfigurationFile.conf

You should have python logs explaining you what is going on.

Contributing

We would be delighted if you could help us improve this work. Please use github features to provide your bugfixes and improvements.

Authors and Sponsors

The Hooker project has been initiated by Georges Bossert and Dimitri Kirchner. Both work for AMOSSYS, a French IT security company http://www.amossys.fr.

License

This software is licensed under the GPLv3 License. See the LICENSE file in the top distribution directory for the full license text.

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