GraphGuard is a tool originally created to update Hooks for Xposed Modules. It tries to match functions and classes in newer versions with updated Proguard Mappings by applying different strategies.

Androguard requires a lot of RAM and compute, and since we need both analyzed APKs in memory to work with them, this program is quite resource-intentsive. htop reports a 13gb RAM usage, though your mileage may vary.

Since this is so resource-intensive, all of it is packed into the Jupyter Notebook. This makes it much more usable and interactive for the person working on it.

• To run the notebook - Install Jupyter notebook (pip install notebook)

• Install dependencies:

  • Install Androguard 3.4.0 alpha1 (pip install androguard --pre)

• Configure it for your project:

  • Replace the file_paths and change them to the target APKs.
  • Replace named_c_decs, named_m_decs, named_f_decs to customize which methods it will try to match. These can be generated with Akrolyb.
  • Replace c_file, m_file, f_file to the declaration files that you want to be updated automatically.

• Use the results

  • All matched declarations are printed.
  • If you use Akrolyb, declarations are extracted from the specified files and replaced automatically. Unmatched declarations are marked with /* TODO */ comments in the generated files. Copy paste the results and only worry about the unmatched declarations.
  • GraphGuard can generate new, updated declarations. If you use Akrolyb, it is recommended to use its CodeGen for GraphGuard instead

GraphGuard internally applies different "strategies" which generate candidates and submit them to the "Accumulator". If a strategy returns a single candidate, the accumulator will consider it an optimal match. For multiple candidates, it compares the candidates to the candidates of other strategies.

I applied this to the "Instaprefs" project (private repository, created by marzika). It found about 82% (42/51) of the hooks going from version 143 to 150, so with a 7 version difference. I could not find any errors in GraphGuard's results. I want it to fail rather than give false results, so I sticked mostly to exact conditions and matchings.