AndroZoo: A Retrospective with a Glimpse into the Future

摘要: In 2016, we released AndroZoo, a continuously expanding dataset of Android applications that aggregates apps from various sources, including the official Google Play app market. As of today, AndroZoo contains approximately 24 million APK files, making it, to the best of our knowledge, the most extensive dataset of Android APKs accessible to the research community. Currently, an average of 500 000 APKs are downloaded every day, with our initial MSR paper counting more than 880 citations on Google Scholar. Over time, we have consistently expanded AndroZoo, adapting to app markets’ evolution and refining our collection process. Additionally, we have started collecting supplementary data that could be valuable for various Android-related research projects and that we are providing to users, such as app descriptions, upload dates, ratings, lists of permissions, and many other kinds of data. This paper begins with a retrospective analysis of AndroZoo, offering statistics on APK files, apps, users, and downloads. Then, we introduce the new data we are releasing to users, offering insights and examples of their usage.