Isolation of Differences in Mobile Applications

Applications for mobile platforms, such as Android and iOS, are frequently updated and pushed to devices via the respective distribution channels or app stores. What has changed in the respective application is usually apparent from the short description. Still, when investigating security-relevant aspects, it is hardly possible to determine at which points in the program changes have been made.

In this project a solution is to be found that enables to compare two versions of program code with each other and that can identify the differences and/or changes made by the update. Considering the fundamental differences in the structure and functionality of apps on different platforms, this study concentrates on Android. The aim is to determine whether and how code changes can be isolated with comparatively little effort, especially with regard to security-relevant updates.