ROSAL

ROSAL (Reverse Obfuscated Standard Android Libraries) helps in the process of reverse-engineering Android Applications, mapping obfuscated classes from an APK with their plain text correspondence in the standard libraries (androidx,core,...) It helps recover actual names for classes like RecyclerView, LiveData, Fragment, CompatActivity, and so on, partly automating the manual process of reverse engineering and allowing for an easier Static Analysis of Android apps. The mapping is limited to the calsses from the standard libraries: it does not involve the mapping of the proprietary calsses of the app.

Fully deterministic, no euristic. No AI is involved in the process.

Install

From local repository

Clone the repository, then cd to its directory and:

python -m pip install .

Prerequisites & Dependencies

Internal dependencies to Androguard, loguru and tqdm should be automatically resolved when installing. If not, install manually.

The tool relies on the Android SDK in order to work. Install it in ~/Android/Sdk

https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/build-tools
https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools

Java is also required. Install it if you already haven't.

Run

# (Optional) Define APK path
export APK=...

Basic usage:

rosal --apk "$APK" # or <path_to_apk>

The command runs the fetch, extraction, catalog, matching and mapping stages in sequence.

By default, intermediate files and matches.tiny are written to ~/rosal. Use --work-dir to choose another directory:

rosal --apk "$APK" --work-dir ./anything_you_want

Files and Directories

markers_file = work_dir / "markers.txt"
library_dex_dir = work_dir / "library_dex"
target_dex_dir = work_dir / "target_dex"
features_file = work_dir / "features.ndjson"
catalog_file = work_dir / "catalog.json"
matches_file = work_dir / "matches.json"
mapping_file = work_dir / "matches.tiny"

Using the matches.tiny file

jadx-gui --mappings-path <path_to>/matches.tiny "$APK"