International Journal of
Information and Education Technology

Abstract

We developed an Application Programming Interface (API) tracing tool for Android-based mobile devices. This tool has the capability of generating trace files by remotely monitoring and recording API calls made by an app running on a mobile device. In addition, the automatic feature of the tool allows repeated tracing tasks to be conducted without user’s intervention against a collection of apps. The trace data may be effectively utilized in analyzing app’s behavior and intentions, which will prove to be useful in several application domains. For example, this tool may be adopted in developing malware detection techniques based upon the API call patterns, identifying resource usages in different app components, building the tool for visualizing the app’s behavior, and constructing efficient mobile forensics tools, etc. Also, different components of this tool make use of various concepts covered in core computer science courses such as Operating Systems, Computer Networks, Compilers, Data Structures, Algorithms, and Security and Forensics, which makes them to be suitable candidate for a senior capstone project. We formulated inter-related project modules based upon the components of this tracing tool, and will adopt them into the senior capstone course at Bowie State University.