# A Longitudinal Study of Cryptographic API: a Decade of Android Malware

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.05573 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05573/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 May 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [MH-1M: A 1.34 Million-Sample Comprehensive Multi-Feature Android Malware Dataset for Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Large Language Models, and Threat Intelligence Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00342/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cryptography has been extensively used in Android applications to guarantee secure communications, conceal critical data from reverse engineering, or ensure mobile users' privacy. Various system-based and third-party libraries for Android provide cryptographic functionalities, and previous works mainly explored the misuse of cryptographic API in benign applications. However, the role of cryptographic API has not yet been explored in Android malware. This paper performs a comprehensive, longitudinal analysis of cryptographic API in Android malware. In particular, we analyzed 603,937 Android applications (half of them malicious, half benign) released between 2012 and 2020, gathering more than 1 million cryptographic API expressions. Our results reveal intriguing trends and insights on how and why cryptography is employed in Android malware. For instance, we point out the widespread use of weak hash functions and the late transition from insecure DES to AES. Additionally, we show that cryptography-related characteristics can help to improve the performance of learning-based systems in detecting malicious applications.