Organizations perform major official activities on their extremely convenient Mobile devices. This extra step to convenience has opened up a Pandora box of mobile app security threats that organizations need to protect themselves against. 

The number of cyberattacks increased by 125% between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the World Economic Forum. It has become more important than ever for organizations to secure their apps to protect their users against mobile app security threats and provide a seamless user experience.

Top 6 Mobile App Security Threats

1. Insecure Authentication/Authorization

Authentication is the process of verifying if the user is actually who they are claiming to be. Authorization is the process of verifying if the user is allowed to perform the action they’re trying to accomplish. 

Malicious actors can exploit authentication and authorization through automated attacks that leverage available resources or custom-built tools. 

They can exploit these mobile app security risks in two ways:

1. Fake or bypass authentication by directly submitting service requests to the app’s backend. They will circumvent any direct interaction with the app.
2. Log in as a legitimate user and then force-browse to a mobile application threats and execute administrative functionality. 

You can test for authorization mobile app vulnerabilities using the following methods:

1. Execute privileged functionality with a low-privilege user or without any user credentials
2. Check if authorization decisions are made within the mobile device or the backend server
3. Employ binary attacks to modify or bypass the authorization logic 
4. Test the app in offline mode and see if any unauthorized functionality can be accessed 

You can test for authentication mobile app security risks using the following methods:

1. Bypass offline authentication and access sensitive sensitive functionality in the app
2. Remove any session tokens from the requests in the backend server and test if any functionality can be executed anonymously
3. Check the strength and security of the authentication scheme used by app 
4. Test the mobile app in both online and offline mode and check for authentication mobile mobile app vulnerabilities

When testing you should look for authentication/authorization mobile app security threats: 

1. Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) mobile app vulnerability
2. Hidden endpoints and functionalities 
3. User Role or Permission Transmissions
4. Ability of the app to execute a backend API service request without providing an access token
5. Local storage of passwords and confidential information
6. Weak password and encryption policy
7. Usage of FaceID and TouchID for authorization

2. Insecure Communication

Modern applications exchange data with remote servers to perform certain tasks through a mobile device’s carrier network and the internet. A malicious actor can intercept and modify, leak, and/or delete this data if this information is not encrypted. 

These attacks can happen through: 

1. Compromised or monitored WiFi networks
2. Rogue carrier or network devices such as routers, towers, etc
3. Malware on the mobile device

These attacks can exploit mobile app vulnerabilities such as: 

1. Deprecated protocols
2. Poor configuration settings
3. Inconsistency in protocols such as SSL/TLS only in few workflows

You can prevent these attacks by following mobile app security best practices checklist.

3. Inadequate Supply Chain Security

An attacker can insert malicious code into the mobile app’s codebase or modify the code during the build process to introduce backdoors, spyware, or other malicious code. An attacker can also exploit mobile app vulnerability in third-party software libraries. 

This will allow the attacker to steal data, spy on your users, take control of your app and hence the device leading to unauthorized access, data manipulation, denial of service, identity theft and more. 

This attack occurs due to: 

1. Lack of secure coding practices
2. Insufficient code reviews and testing
3. Insufficient or insecure app signing and distribution process
4. Weakness in third-party software components or libraries
5. Insufficient security controls for data, encryption, storage
6. Exposing sensitive data to unauthorized access

This Mobile Application threats can arise due to: 

1. Lack of security in third-party components such as libraries and frameworks
2. Malicious insider threats
3. Inadequate testing and validation
4. Lack of security awareness

You can prevent these mobile application vulnerabilities by employing the following prevention methods: 

1. Implement secure coding practices, code review and testing
2. Ensure secure app signing and distribution processes 
3. Use trusted and validated third-party libraries or components
4. Establish security controls
5. Monitor and detect supply chain security incidents 

4. Unprotected Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

Privacy controls are concerned with protecting PII such as names, addresses, payment information, email addresses, IP addresses, health information, religion, sexuality, political opinions and more. If this information reaches malicious actors, they could impersonate, blackmail, and/or harm the victim. 

PII could undergo three violations: 

1. Violation of confidentiality – leaked data
2. Violation of integrity – manipulation of data
3. Violation of availability – destruction/block of data

Obtaining PII requires the attacker to breach security. They could eavesdrop on the network communication, access file system, clipboard, or logs with trojan or if they have access to the mobile device, they can take a local backup of the data. An app can be vulnerable to this attack if it processes some form of PII. And this is most apps. Client apps’ IP addresses are visible to a server, logs of the apps’ usage, and metadata sent with crash reports are all PII. 

This attack happens through: 

1. Insecure data storage and communication
2. Data access through insecure authentication and authorization
3. Insider attacks on the apps’ sandbox

The safest approach to prevent privacy violations is to minimize the amount and variety of PII that is stored and processed. This requires full awareness of all PII assets in a given app.

 Follow a few simple steps to protect PII from mobile application vulnerabilities: 

1. Assess the importance of the PII
2. Reduce the amount of PII being processes
3. Make the data anonymous by hashing, bucketing, and/or adding noise
4. Add expiration periods to the data
5. Make users aware of the additional risk of making PII available

You can employ threat modeling to determine the most likely ways that privacy violations may occur. Automated and manual cybersecurity tools might reveal common pitfalls like logging of sensitive data, leakage to clipboard, or URL query parameters. 

5. Improper Credential Usage

Adversaries can exploit mobile application vulnerabilities in both hardcoded credentials and improper credential usage. Once these mobile app security risks are identified, an attacker can use hardcoded credentials to gain unauthorized access to sensitive functionalities. They can misuse credentials by gaining access through improperly validated or stored credentials bypassing the need for legitimate access. 

It is important to keep employing a comprehensive security testing process to detect and prevent any mobile app vulnerabilities. 

Some mobile application vulnerabilities that you should look for:

1. Hardcoded mobile application vulnerabilities
2. Insecure credential transmission
3. Insecure credential storage
4. Weak user authentication

You can prevent this mobile app threats by employing the following methods:

1. Avoid using hard coded credentials in your mobile app’s code or configuration files
2. Encrypt credentials during transmission
3. Do not store user credentials on the device. Instead, consider using secure, revocable access tokens
4. Implement strong user authentication protocols
5. Regularly update and rotate any used API keys or tokens

6. Insufficient Validation and Sanitization of Data

Insufficient validation and sanitization of data from external sources such as user inputs or network data can introduce severe mobile application vulnerabilities. Mobile apps that fail to properly protect themselves against this mobile application threats are vulnerable to attacks such as SQL injection, command injection, and CSS attacks. 

Inadequate output validation can result in data corruption or presentation mobile application vulnerabilities, allowing malicious actors to inject malicious code or manipulate sensitive data. 

This mobile application threats can occur due to: 

1. Insufficient Input Validation
2. Insufficient Output Validation
3. Lack of Contextual Validation
4. Failure to Validate Data Integrity
5. Errors in application logic
6. Incomplete implementation of validation checks
7. Lack of security awareness
8. Insufficient testing and code review practices

An application can be vulnerable to this threat due to:

1. Failure to properly validate user input can expose the application to injection attacks like SQL injection, command injection, or XSS.
2. Insufficient sanitization of output data can result in XSS mobile app vulnerabilities, allowing attackers to inject and execute malicious scripts.
3. Neglecting to consider specific validation requirements based on data context can create mobile application vulnerabilities, such as path traversal attacks or unauthorized access to files.
4. Not performing proper data integrity checks can lead to data corruption or unauthorized modification, compromising reliability and security.
5. Neglecting secure coding practices, such as using parameterized queries or escaping/encoding data, contributes to input/output validation mobile app vulnerabilities.

To prevent “Insufficient Input/Output Validation” mobile app vulnerabilities:

1. Validate and sanitize user input using strict validation techniques.
2. Implement input length restrictions and reject unexpected or malicious data.
3. Properly sanitize output data to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
4. Use output encoding techniques when displaying or transmitting data.
5. Perform specific validation based on data context (e.g., file uploads, database queries) to prevent attacks like path traversal or injection.
6. Implement data integrity checks to detect and prevent data corruption or unauthorized modifications.
7. Follow secure coding practices, such as using parameterized queries and prepared statements to prevent SQL injection.
8. Conduct regular security assessments, including penetration testing and code reviews, to identify and address mobile application vulnerabilities.

Employing all of these on your own can get tedious. That’s where Astra Security a provider of mobile application security services comes in. Astra Security is a mobile application threats assessment and penetration testing company that provides round-the-clock security testing services to assess internet-facing assets as quickly and efficiently as possible to detect mobile app vulnerabilities. 

Our VAPT offerings help with: 

1. Better security coverage for web and mobile applications, cloud infrastructure, networks, and APIs.  
2. Detection and remediation of mobile application vulnerabilities and security gaps of varying criticality. 
3. Maintenance of compliance with regulatory requirements like HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and GDPR. 
4. Shifting from DevOps to DevSecOps giving due priority to security testing applications in SDLC.

Conclusion

Users are more conscious about mobile app security and they want protection against these security threats. They have high expectations from the apps they download with respect to their privacy. They will download an app only when they realize they are less likely to encounter an app infected with malicious code. Most users also check developer activity updates to get to know your app better. 

It is hence important to understand the various mobile application security threats and effectively implement them to ensure maximum security and to also provide a seamless user experience.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)