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.

When to Use

• When investigating security incidents that require analyzing android malware with apktool
• When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
• When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
• When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+ with androguard
• apktool (for resource decompilation)
• jadx (for Java source recovery, optional)