  Since last decade, smartphones have become an integral part of everyone's
life. Having the ability to handle many useful and attractive applications,
smartphones sport flawless functionality and small sizes leading to their
exponential growth. Additionally, due to the huge user base and a wide range of
functionalities, these mobile platforms have become a popular source of
information to the public through several Apps provided by the DHS Citizen
Application Directory. Such wide audience to this platform is also making it a
huge target for cyber- attacks. While Android, the most popular open source
mobile platform, has its base set of permissions to protect the device and
resources, it does not provide a security framework to defend against any
attack. This paper surveys threat, vulnerability and security analysis tools,
which are open source in nature, for the Android platform and systemizes the
knowledge of Android security mechanisms. Additionally, a comparison of three
popular tools is presented.
