apk-info

A full-featured apk parser.

Features

• A malware-friendly zip extractor. Great article about BadPack technique;
• A malware-friendly axml and arsc extractor;
• A full AXML (Android Binary XML) implementation;
• A full ARSC (Android Resource) implementation;
• Support for extracting information contained in the APK Signature Block 42:
• APK Signature scheme v1;
• APK Signature scheme v2;
• APK Signature scheme v3;
• APK Signature scheme v3.1;
• Stamp Block v1 & v2;
• Apk Channel Block;
• Packer NG v2;
• Vasdolly v2
• Google Play Frosting (there are plans, but there is critically little information about it);
• Correct extraction of the MainActivity based on how the Android OS does it;
• Bindings for python 3.10+ with typings - no more # type: ignore;
• And of course just a fast parser - 🙃

Getting started

cli

Installation

cargo install apk-info-cli

Help

A command-line tool to inspect and extract APK files

Usage: apk-info [COMMAND]

Commands:
  show        Show basic information about apk file
  extract     Unpack apk files as zip archive [aliases: x]
  axml        Read and pretty-print binary AndroidManifest.xml
  completion  Generate shell completion
  help        Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Python

Installation

uv pip install apk-info

Get basic information about APK

from apk_info import APK

apk = APK("./path-to-file.apk")
package_name = apk.get_package_name()
main_activities = apk.get_main_activities()
min_sdk = apk.get_min_sdk_version()

print(f"Package Name: {package_name}")
print(f"Minimal SDK: {min_sdk}")

if not main_activities:
    print("apk is not launchable!")
    exit()

print(f"Main Activity: {package_name}/{main_activities[0]}")

Get information about signatures

import sys

from apk_info import APK, Signature

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print(f"usage: {sys.argv[0]} <apk>")
    sys.exit(1)

file = sys.argv[1]
apk = APK(file)

signatures = apk.get_signatures()
for signature in signatures:
    match signature:
        case Signature.V1() | Signature.V2() | Signature.V3() | Signature.V31():
            for cert in signature.certificates:
                print(f"{cert.subject=} {cert.issuer=} {cert.valid_from=} {cert.valid_until=}")
        case Signature.ApkChannelBlock():
            print(f"got apk channel block: {signature.value}")
        case _:
            print(f"oh, cool, library added some new feature - {signature}")

Performance Analysis

Environment:

• OS: macOS Tahoe 26.0.1 arm64
• CPU: Apple M3 Pro (12) @ 4.06 GHz

The script:

1. Extract all available signatures from a file;
2. Extract the package name;
3. Extract the minimum sdk version;
4. Get a list of all Main Activities;
5. Get the application name;

apk-info library:

• Build - release-lto;
• Python bindings (honest comparison);

---

test case (clean collection):

• 152 apk files;
• Total size - 20GB;
• Logging mode - warning;

#	apk-info	androguard
1	0.98s user 4.32s system 80% cpu 6.584 total	57.39s user 4.88s system 97% cpu 1:03.85 total
2	0.96s user 4.23s system 79% cpu 6.486 total	57.98s user 5.04s system 97% cpu 1:04.80 total
3	0.95s user 4.15s system 79% cpu 6.422 total	55.56s user 4.48s system 97% cpu 1:01.55 total

---

test case (malware collection):

• 3084 apk files;
• Total size - 23GB;
• Logging mode - warning;

[!IMPORTANT] There are a lot of malicious samples in this set that androguard simply cannot parse.

#	apk-info	androguard
1	2.49s user 4.74s system 73% cpu 9.840 total	141.29s user 6.86s system 98% cpu 2:31.09 total
2	2.50s user 4.77s system 75% cpu 9.641 total	138.04s user 6.32s system 97% cpu 2:27.33 total
3	2.49s user 4.78s system 75% cpu 9.650 total	139.33s user 6.65s system 98% cpu 2:28.87 total

---

On average, the speed gain is about x10.

The main advantage is that apk-info can parse many more malicious files than androguard.

FAQ

• Why not just use androguard?

Almost all of my projects are born from something that is inconvenient to use. Androguard is a great tool in itself, but it is simply not possible to maintain it (in my opinion) and it is not suitable for production-ready code. It is also not suitable for analyzing a large number of files due to the fact that all the logic is written in not very optimized way.

• I want to modify the apk, how do I do it using this library?

The library is designed for read-only mode only, because i need a good tool with which i can easily and quickly extract information from the apk. There are many other good tools out there.

Credits

• androguard
• apkInspector