Android has dominated the smartphone market and has become the most popular operating system for mobile devices. However, security threats in Android applications have also increased in lockstep with Android’s success. More than 3 million new malware samples, targeting the Android operating system were discovered in 2017. Although persistent research efforts have been to address these threats and several detection techniques and tools have been developed as a result, they all exhibit distinct limitations such that no single solution can claim to solve the Android malware problem. In this paper, we survey the main mechanisms and approaches for malware detection in Android applications. We identify the advantages and limitations of each and suggest avenues of research to advance knowledge in this regard.

Android主导了智能手机市场，并已成为移动设备最受欢迎的操作系统。但是，随着Android的成功，Android应用程序中的安全威胁也同步增长。2017年，发现了针对Android操作系统的超过300万个新恶意软件样本。尽管一直致力于解决这些威胁，并开发了多种检测技术和工具，但它们均具有明显的局限性，因此没有一个解决方案可以声称可以解决Android恶意软件问题。在本文中，我们调查了Android应用程序中恶意软件检测的主要机制和方法。我们确定了每种方法的优点和局限性，并提出了研究途径以提高这方面的知识。