Mobile Application Security Testing: How to Perform it Effectively
Mobile application security testing has become more relevant than ever, with mobile devices growing in popularity at an exponential rate while more and more companies and people make use of them on a daily basis. To get the most out of your app, you need to ensure that it’s secure from malicious attacks at all times so that it can keep functioning properly, as well as protect users’ data from being stolen.
Luckily, performing mobile application security testing isn’t all that hard once you know what to look for during the process.
Detailed Blog: Mobile Application Security: A Detailed Guide
What is App Security?
App security is a vital part of any app’s existence. When people buy a phone, they want to use all of its apps without being bothered by security issues. If you develop an app and you don’t provide security within it, then hackers can take advantage of any bugs and bugs can be very harmful. For example, if somebody finds out that there are certain servers that aren’t secure because their passwords are easy to hack into, they might try a brute force attack on them because they know that there is little risk in doing so.
If a brute force attack works on your servers, then hackers will be able to get free access to your application as well as any information within it. That is why it is very important to select the best mobile app development company in the UK.
Mobile Apps Hacking Statistics
In 2015, 59% of organizations experienced a security breach, and mobile apps were involved in 72% of all breaches. Hacking statistics show that having a secure mobile app can protect you from cyber-attacks by keeping your data safe. While there are different types of app testing techniques and software solutions available on the market, performing mobile application security testing is one way for you to ensure that your program is protected against hacks. This form of testing involves checking for potential vulnerabilities in your program before these flaws are exploited by cybercriminals. Your first step is conducting a threat analysis, which can be done using your own staff or outsourcing to professionals with specialized expertise in identifying coding issues that could lead to hacking problems.
3 Types of Mobile Apps
There are three main types of mobile apps: web-based apps, hybrid apps and native apps. While they all have their advantages and disadvantages, native mobile applications offer developers more functionality, flexibility and access to device-specific features. Hybrid apps are web pages that are housed within a native app wrapper that allows them to run on a variety of platforms while retaining many of their original characteristics. Web-based mobile applications have only recently begun catching up with other forms of mobile development but still lack in terms of speed and responsiveness compared with their native or hybrid counterparts.
- Web apps
- Native apps
- Hybrid apps
Criteria for Mobile App Security Testing
As soon as you set out to find a mobile app security testing company, you’ll notice that some offer more complete security testing than others. You may ask what makes one test firm better than another. There are two criteria by which a firm’s quality should be judged: staff and approach. These two factors will affect how they go about completing their tests and interpreting their results, so take them into account when searching for mobile app security testing help.
Analyzing Threat and Modeling
An attacker can change tactics, so you need to update your threat model accordingly. Understand who might be attacking your app, how they would attack and what data is most valuable to them. Then test that data against those attacks. If you discover a major security issue in beta, you'll have time for thorough testing with an extremely small number of users and risk being able to fix things before launch. You'll also be able to correct any problems before thousands or millions of users are affected. Your testing and analysis are more accurate as your app becomes more complex and as you gather more information about real-world use from customers (for example, specific ways people use your app). These types of updates should always be considered part of your continuous security process.
Analyzing Mobile Application Vulnerabilities
It’s vital that you identify and document vulnerabilities in your application before making a public release. If you don’t, hackers will have an easier time finding security issues later on, when it’s more difficult for you to repair them. While there are various software tools available for analyzing mobile applications, one of my favourites is AppCheck from Veracode. This tool enables you to analyze source code statically, as well as run automated tests against binary files and dynamic analysis (such as what occurs while someone interacts with your app). For example, an app may contain publicly accessible data that can be used by hackers or leaked if a vulnerability exists in your app—and AppCheck can find those types of problems by analyzing your code statically.
Understanding Mobile App Security Issues: Android vs iOS
It is pertinent to take note that Android vs iOS mobile app security issues vary with each platform. For instance, a typical Android app security issue is having weak or no encryption for sensitive data. That could mean unencrypted API calls, files without encryption, application files that are not encrypted at rest and so on. Furthermore, another typical example of an Android app security issue is unsafe OS API calls which are insecurely implemented by developers. And in the case of iOS apps, we have general issues such as unencrypted communications between apps via APIs and so on...all these lead to mobile app security issues.
Mobile App Security Issues in Android:
Mobile app security issues in Android have been highlighted in past articles. In fact, Android is currently the most popular mobile operating system (though usage may be overtaken by iOS later in 2016). It will soon start utilizing HTTP/2 and WebRTC protocols. While these changes should make your mobile apps faster and more secure, they’ll also create opportunities for app developers with less scrupulous intentions. Attacks against Android are still on a rise and are expected to continue at the current pace for several years. Unfortunately, cybercriminals know how often Android updates its OS.
Mobile App Security Issues in iOS:
iOS security issues can be troublesome, as they may require a jailbreak of a user’s device—that is, circumventing security restrictions. Apple releases iOS updates regularly that patch major security vulnerabilities; however, new issues pop up regularly, including ones linked to a third-party application environment called Xcode Ghost. In order to have a secure system for your app, you should ensure that all users are running current versions of iOS and you should run regular security scans on your own applications in order to ensure there aren’t any vulnerabilities.
Mobile App Development Trends in 2022
Conclusion
Since we have discussed each of these ways, it’s time to draw a conclusion. We’ve come up with two ways of how can mobile application security testing be performed. Of course, you can try a manual one and let your testers do all things by themselves or use automation for that. If you like something simple and easy-to-use, then choose manual testing as an option; if you are not afraid of complex tasks, then go for automated testing since it gives a higher precision level. You will enjoy both of them and surely achieve success!
