Static Analysis of Android Programs

Android is a programming language based on Java and an operating system for mobile or embedded devices. It features an extended event-based library and dynamic inflation of graphical views from declarative XML layout files. A static analyzer for Android programs must consider such features, for correctness and precision. This article is a description of how we extended the Julia system, based on abstract interpretation, to run formally correct analyses of Android programs. We have analyzed with Julia the Android sample applications by Google and a few larger open-source programs. Julia has found, automatically, bugs and flaws both in the Google samples and in the open-source programs.