Analyzing Android Malware with Apktool

Overview

Android malware distributed as APK files can be statically analyzed to extract permissions, activities, services, broadcast receivers, and suspicious API calls without executing the sample. This skill uses androguard for programmatic APK analysis, identifying dangerous permission combinations, obfuscated code patterns, dynamic code loading, reflection-based API calls, and network communication indicators.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+ with androguard
• apktool (for resource decompilation)
• jadx (for Java source recovery, optional)
• Isolated analysis environment (VM or sandbox)
• Sample APK files for analysis

Steps