Static detection of energy defect patterns in Android applications

Abstract

For static analysis researchers, Android software presents a wide variety of interesting challenges. The target of our work is static detection of energy-drain defects in Android applications. The management of energy-intensive resources (e.g., GPS) creates various opportunities for software defects. Our goal is to detect statically “missing deactivation” energy-drain defects in the user interface of the application. First, we define precisely two patterns of run-time energy-drain behaviors, based on modeling of Android GUI control-flow paths and energy-related listener leaks along such paths. Next, we define a static detection algorithm targeting these patterns. The analysis considers valid interprocedural control-flow paths in a callback method and its transitive callees, in order to detect operations that add or remove listeners. Sequences of callbacks are then analyzed for possible listener leaks. Our evaluation considers the detection of GUI-related energy-drain defects reported in prior work, as well as new defects not discovered by prior approaches. In summary, the detection is very effective and precise, suggesting that the proposed analysis is suitable for practical use in static checking tools for Android.