Challenges In Mobile App Security

Mobile technology has developed exponentially and witnessed a massive rise in the user-base over the last few years. Mobile applications store and process a spectrum of important information ranging from credit card information, Intellectual property to medical records.

This sensitive data can efficiently be targeted by malicious attackers. Research suggests that there are nearly 14 million mobile devices in use with active vulnerabilities!

With blurring lines between secure and exposed data, there is a requirement to have a greater and agiler security infrastructure.

Mobile application security testing services evaluate an application and its security along with a vast pool of mobile applications threat vectors to recognize inherent vulnerabilities while assuring a secure state of the application in use.

Challenges in Mobile App Security

Device Fragmentation

Mobile application testing requires covering a multiplicity of mobile devices with different capacities, features, and limitations. Description of security vulnerabilities particular to devices makes performance testing a tough task.

The testing team can’t test release as fast as the development team is producing them, so they are becoming a bottleneck in the release process. This also leads to the production of low-quality apps.

Insecure Data Storage

In many popular apps, customers simply enter their passwords once when activating the payment portion of the app and use it, again and again, to make unlimited investments without having to re-input their password or username.

In such cases, user data must be safe and usernames, email addresses, and passwords must be encrypted. For example, in 2012 a flaw in Skype data security allowed hackers to open the Skype app and dial arbitrary phone numbers using a simple link in the contents of an email. 

 

Weak Hosting controls

When creating their first mobile applications, businesses normally expose server-side systems that were previously unavailable to outside networks.

The servers on which your app is hosted should have security measures to prevent unauthorized users from accessing data. This involves your own servers, and the servers of any third-party systems your app might be accessing.

Weak Encryptions

A mobile app can accept data from all varieties of sources. In the absence of enough encryption, attackers could change inputs such as cookies and environment variables.

Attackers can bypass the security when decisions on authentication and authorization are made based on the values of these inputs. Recently hackers targeted Starbucks mobile users to siphon money out of their Starbucks mobile app. 

What is Synopsys’ Mobile Application Security Testing methodology?

The Synopsys mobile application security testing services build on our nearly 22 years of security expertise.

We use proprietary static and dynamic analysis tools built especially for the mobile landscape, along with manual confirmation and analysis, to find vulnerabilities in mobile apps.

These tools are regularly updated and tested against new releases of the underlying mobile platforms, helping us recognize problems that could be caused by a combination of application code and platform version.

In addition to looking for vulnerabilities in the app itself, our testing also looks for problems in the back-end services that are utilized by the application. By concentrating both on the app and its back-end services, we make sure that all aspects of the application are covered during testing.