Basics of Android apps
Every app that we download and install from the Play Store or any other source has the extension .apk
. These APK files are compressed archive files, which contain other files and folders that we will discuss in a moment. Typically, the end users download these apps and install them by accepting the required permissions and then use them. Let's dive into the technical details such as what these apps contain and how they are actually packaged, what happens when we install them, and so on.
Android app structure
First let's start with the final binary that we use as an end user. As mentioned earlier, Android apps have the extension .APK (short for Android Application Package), which is an archive of various files and folders. This is typically what an end user or a penetration tester would get. Since an Android app is an archive file, we can uncompress it using any traditional extraction tool. The following diagram shows the folder structure of an uncompressed...