Is appshark free to use?

appshark is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What is appshark written in?

appshark is primarily written in Kotlin. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/bytedance/appshark, and it has 1,751 GitHub stars.

appshark: Open Source Compliance & Risk Management

Document Index

AppShark

Appshark is a static taint analysis platform to scan vulnerabilities in an Android app.

Prerequisites

Appshark requires a specific version of JDK -- JDK 11. After testing, it does not work on other LTS versions, JDK 8 and JDK 16, due to the dependency compatibility issue.

Building/Compiling AppShark

We assume that you are working in the root directory of the project repo. You can build the whole project with the gradle tool.

$ ./gradlew build  -x test

After executing the above command, you will see an artifact file AppShark-0.1.2-all.jar in the directory build/libs.

Running AppShark

Like the previous step, we assume that you are still in the root folder of the project. You can run the tool with

$ java -jar build/libs/AppShark-0.1.2-all.jar  config/config.json5

The config.json5 has the following configuration contents.

{
  "apkPath": "/Users/apks/app1.apk"
}

Each JSON has these basic field.

apkPath: the path of the apk file to analyze
out: the path of the output directory
rules: specifies the rules, split by ,. Default is all *.json files in the $rulePath directory
rulePath: specifies the rule's parent directory, default is ./config/rules
maxPointerAnalyzeTime: the timeout duration in seconds set for the analysis started from an entry point
debugRule: specify the rule name that enables logging for debugging

For more config field, please visit net.bytedance.security.app.ArgumentConfig

If you provide a configuration JSON file which sets the output path as out in the project root directory, you will find the result file out/results.json after running the analysis.

Interpreting the Results

Below is an example of the results.json.

{
  "AppInfo": {
    "AppName": "test",
    "PackageName": "net.bytedance.security.app",
    "min_sdk": 17,
    "target_sdk": 28,
    "versionCode": 1000,
    "versionName": "1.0.0"
  },
  "SecurityInfo": {
    "FileRisk": {
      "unZipSlip": {
        "category": "FileRisk",
        "detail": "",
        "model": "2",
        "name": "unZipSlip",
        "possibility": "4",
        "vulners": [
          {
            "details": {
              "position": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>",
              "Sink": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r31",
              "entryMethod": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void f()>",
              "Source": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r3",
              "url": "/Volumes/dev/zijie/appshark-opensource/out/vuln/1-unZipSlip.html",
              "target": [
                "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r3",
                "pf{obj{<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>:35=>java.lang.StringBuilder}(unknown)->@data}",
                "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r11",
                "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolderFix1(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r31"
              ]
            },
            "hash": "ec57a2a3190677ffe78a0c8aaf58ba5aee4d2247",
            "possibility": "4"
          },
          {
            "details": {
              "position": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>",
              "Sink": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r34",
              "entryMethod": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void f()>",
              "Source": "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r3",
              "url": "/Volumes/dev/zijie/appshark-opensource/out/vuln/2-unZipSlip.html",
              "target": [
                "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r3",
                "pf{obj{<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>:33=>java.lang.StringBuilder}(unknown)->@data}",
                "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r14",
                "<net.bytedance.security.app.pathfinder.testdata.ZipSlip: void UnZipFolder(java.lang.String,java.lang.String)>->$r34"
              ]
            },
            "hash": "26c6d6ee704c59949cfef78350a1d9aef04c29ad",
            "possibility": "4"
          }
        ],
        "wiki": "",
        "deobfApk": "/Volumes/dev/zijie/appshark-opensource/app.apk"
      }
    }
  },
  "DeepLinkInfo": {
  },
  "HTTP_API": [
  ],
  "JsBridgeInfo": [
  ],
  "BasicInfo": {
    "ComponentsInfo": {
    },
    "JSNativeInterface": [
    ]
  },
  "UsePermissions": [
  ],
  "DefinePermissions": {
  },
  "Profile": "/Volumes/dev/zijie/appshark-opensource/out/vuln/3-profiler.json"
}

License

AppShark is licensed under the APACHE LICENSE, VERSION 2.0

Security Notice

UI/Server is an auxiliary testing tool that should not be used in production environments and can only be deployed for local testing.

Contact Us

Lark

What is appshark?

What it is

Key capabilities

Who uses it and how

Getting started

When to use it — and when not to