A type and effect system for activation flow of components in Android programs

This paper proposes a type and effect system for analyzing activation flow between components through intents in Android programs. The activation flow information is necessary for all Android analyses such as a secure information flow analysis for Android programs. We first design a formal semantics for a core of featherweight Android/Java, which can address interaction between components through intents. Based on the formal semantics, we design a type and effect system for analyzing activation flow between components and demonstrate the soundness of the system.