Closing the Loop -- Re-Engineering Android Applications

A lot of people have been asking for slides or more tutorial material for Android reverse engineering after my talks at BSides and Shmoocon. Problem is, neither of these cons have actually recorded the talks -- instead, I have put together a screencast demonstrating the workflow involved in re-engineering an application, adding a password logger and verifying its operation. This has two benefits -- first, it demonstrates some of these techniques without being redundant with my "Android Reverse Engineering Using the Emulator" and "Android Anatomy" talks, and it serves as a good demonstration for non-hackers, showing how easy it is to patch applications.



This technique is very common in the Android Market right now, with people modifying apps for good and bad reasons -- at some point, Google is going to have to do some level of verifing "good" applications and "responsible" developers, because the current market is packed with apps that demonstrate varying levels of naughtiness.