There are many tools for an android application penetration test, But which tools are used for which purpose and which details we can extract from it is the most important thing.

We can also use set of all tools built in some framework. They all are available as open source

Appuse, Appie, Santoku, Pentestbox, MobSF etc.

Let’s start with Appuse

AppUse is a VM (Virtual Machine) developed by AppSec Labs. It is a unique platform for mobile application security testing in the Android environment and includes exclusive custom-made tools created by AppSec Labs. Free version is sufficient

It is built in Appuse framework or else external rooted mobile device can be attached and tested. Launching emulator will give you virtual device.

Root Device: It will root emulator device and give sudo access by using superuser.apk

Open ADB shell: It will open ADB shell

The mobile device can be connected to App use if you don’t want to use an emulator

Step1: On mobile device enable USB debugging and connect to the machine

Step2: adb devices will show you attached devices

Android Application Pentesting Tools:

Some basic tools for pentesting which will be useful in many test cases are already there for you. You just have to click on the tool

Reversing of .apk file

For reverse engineering and many Pentest tools are already built in App use.

Tools:

Click on load APK if you want to load .apk file which is already installed in device/emulator. Else you can select .apk file from Local i.e. from the base machine. Google play option is also available.

Apk file is a zip file. Zip file consists of XML and other android application resources. Apktools decodes the resource files and converts the android bytecode into assembly level small files. Dex2jar converts the dex files into java bytecode file archived inside the jar file. JD GUI and Luyten decompiles java byte code to java source code file.

Dalvik Virtual Machine does not use java bytecode. Instead, it uses its own file format called dex (Dalvik Executable Format). It holds the definition of multiple classes and relative data.

It is not in built-in app use you can install with guidance of below link

Drozer allows you to assume the role of an Android app and interact with other apps. It can do anything that an installed application can do, such as make use of Android’s Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanism and interact with the underlying operating system.