A dynamic approach for detecting device administrator abuse in Android
Shan, Zhiyong Neamtiu, Iulian Wang, Xin
Shan, Zhiyong
Neamtiu, Iulian
Wang, Xin
Authors
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Time Period
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Original Date
Digitization Date
Issue Date
2026-03-17
Type
Conference paper
Genre
Keywords
Android,Device administrator,Dynamic analysis
Subjects (LCSH)
Citation
Z. Shan, I. Neamtiu and X. Wang, "A Dynamic Approach for Detecting Device Administrator Abuse in Android," 2025 IEEE 7th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and Information Processing (AICSIP), Hangzhou, China, 2025, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/AICSIP65423.2025.11427232.
Abstract
Device Administrator (DA) in mobile OSes can manage smart phone or perform parental control. But it also can be used to develop ransomware, then the user has to factory-reset the phone. The DA apps that cannot be uninstalled are called as 'Deathless Device Administrator' (DDA). In this work, we built the first dynamic analyzer named DAAT, which is able to detect DDA apps. In the experiment, our DAAT successfully found 4,962 DA apps and 770 DDA apps from 47,350 candidate apps. We further manually checked these 4,962 apps on more than 3 smart phones and confirmed 715 true DDA apps. Some of the DDA apps are still listed on Google Play Store. The experiment results show that our DAAT is effective (90.5% F-measure) and efficient (226 seconds per app). © 2025 IEEE.
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Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Journal
2025 IEEE 7th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and Information Processing, AICSIP 2025
Book Title
Series
7th IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and Information Processing, AICSIP 2025
25 July 2025 through 27 July 2025
Hangzhou
222494
25 July 2025 through 27 July 2025
Hangzhou
222494