APPregator: A Large-Scale Platform for Mobile Security Analysis

The Google Play Store currently includes up to 2.8M apps. Nonetheless, it is rather straightforward for a user to quickly retrieve the app that matches her tastes, as Google provides a reliable search engine. However, it is likewise almost impossible to select apps according to a security footprint (e.g., all apps that enforce SSL pinning). To overcome this limitation, this paper presents APPregator, a platform which allows security analysts to i) download apps from multiple app stores, ii) perform automated security analysis (both static and dynamic), and iii) aggregate the results according to user-defined security constraints (e.g., vulnerability patterns). The empirical assessment of APPregator on a set of 200.000 apps taken from the Google Play Store and Aptoide suggests that the current implementation grants a good level of performance and reliability. APPregator will be made freely available to the research community by the end of 2020.