Automated System for Numerical Similarity Evaluation of Android Applications

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the design and development of a system for automating numerical similarity assessment of Android applications. The task of the evaluation of application similarity is reduced to the similarity evaluation of sets of control flow graphs constructed based on code from classes.dex files of applications. The similarity value was calculated based on the similarity matrix. The algorithms of graph editing and Levenshtein distance were used to compare control flow graphs. The application similarity criteria were formulated, and their representation forms were investigated. Types of Android application models and methods of their construction are presented. A prototype of the system for automating the numerical evaluation of Android-applications similarity is developed. Optimization of the software solution is performed with the help of parallel programming tools. Experiments are carried out, and a conclusion is drawn concerning the ability of the developed system to detect similarities between Android applications.