Mobile App VAPT Services

Mobile App Pentesting

Today's internet traffic is advancing from desktop browsers to mobile browsers, due to the surge in usage of mobile apps. Unfortunately, mobile applications are not safe, in fact they introduce serious cyber security threats for the "data in transit" and the "data at rest".

When your services are accessed over the internet by the customer to through an app, it is imperative to ensure security at both ends. If there are security holes in the servers that store and process customer data, developing a highly secure mobile app is meaningless; conversely, an insecure app could allow customer data to be retrieved or redirected to a remote attacker, even if your servers are highly secure.

Security Testing of Mobile application provides exhaustive security testing of mobile applications as per the high security standards. The application is tested for technical, logical vulnerabilities and industry best practices to provide a detailed report with proof of concepts, by our experienced tech-team. Our reports also include detailed remediation procedures to aid in fixing the issues.

Valency Networks expertise and experience in mobile app pentesting is distinguished in performing both security testing of the client-side mobile application and the server-side software to identify the vulnerabilities. This makes us one of the top mobile app pentesting (VAPT) companies in India and abroad.

Some Facts

Data At Rest Attacks- 78%
Data In Transit Attacks - 92%
Malware Susceptibility - 40%

Valency Networks helps keep your business and customers secure against attacks, by our mobile application security testing solution that discovers malicious or potentially risky actions in your mobile applications. Valency Networks has a dedicated team of experts from mobile application development and web technology development background. We perform in-depth assessment of the mobile application architecture, detect various attack vectors for data at rest and data in transit scenarios. We have numerous success stories of the following industry sectors for whom we have performed VAPT of their mobile applications.

Banking and Finance

Gaming

Manufacturing

Payment Gateway

Social Networking



WHAT IS MOBILE VAPT?

Mobile App Security Testing Company, Mobile App VAPT

We offer Static Application Security Testing (SAST) which provides multiple depths to find and eradicate common to critical software security vulnerabilities within your source code.

The web services used by the app are also included in the app testing service. We examine the following aspects in detail to ensure that the customer data is not exposed to other parties by backend server:

  • Server configuration errors
  • Loopholes in server code or scripts
  • Advice on past errors due to which data could have been exposed
  • Testing for known vulnerabilities
  • Make sure to reduce the enticement and risk to attack
  • Future security plans and fixes
  • WebView misconfiguration


A critical component of any software security initiative is Application Security Testing (AST). A combination of commercial and proprietary tools is used to deliver the right test at the right depth, by our testing experts. Further, in-depth manual checks and custom scans are combined for a precise security assessment to identify critical risks and reduces false positives.

The Mobile App Security Testing service can be used to make sure that it is compliant with PCI DSS v2.0 requirement 11.3, (penetration testing) as it includes both application layer and network testing. The two major types of security testing methods we look into for mobile app security testing are: DAR (Data At Rest) and DIT (Data In Transit).

Mobile App Security Testing Company, What do you get by testing security of mobile app?

WHY MOBILE VAPT?

Users favor storing their personal/confidential data on mobile devices due to a heavy dependency on them. Android or iOS operating systems is used by Mobile technology. Just as any other operating system, both of these are vulnerable to security problems. Correspondingly, the applications created and running on these are vulnerable too. The following reasons pose a bigger security threat to the data from all applications running on a mobile device:

  • Data is stored on the device
  • Data flows over the wire/wireless
  • How data should be secured while being on the device have no definite standards.
  • How data should be encrypted while being sent over wire/wireless lacks awareness.



What do you get by testing security of mobile app?



  • It induces the confidence in your and your customer's mind from application security standpoint.
  • It helps you mitigate security risks to your customer's data.
  • It results in better marketing opportunities for your application to sell in global markets.
WHY MOBILE APP SECURITY NEEDS TO BE TESTED?, Mobile App Security Testing Company

HOW MOBILE VAPT IS PERFORMED?

Mobile VAPT process has the following steps:

  • Dicovery: This demands the collection of information by the penetration tester, that is essential in understanding events that lead to the successful exploitation of mobile applications.
  • Assessment or analysis: This involves going through the source code of the mobile application to identify potential weaknesses and entry points that can be exploited.
  • Exploitation: In this step, the penetration tester exploits the mobile application in a manner not intended by the programmer, by leveraging the discovered vulnerabilities.
  • Reporting: This is the concluding stage of the methodology. This step comprises of presenting and recording the discovered vulnerabilities in a manner that makes sense to management. This stage distinguishes a penetration test from an attack. A more comprehensive discussion of the four stages follows.

What do you gain by performing Mobile App VAPT?



Mobile App Security Testing Company, Mobile App VAPT


  • By guessing the behaviors of attackers and anticipating their moves, we aid in preventing future attacks.
  • Without bothering about security risks, going live with the new mobile application.
  • If necessary, changing the architecture of the mobile application such as network, components of the mobile application.
  • Aids in knowing about the skills and experience of the app development agency that builds your mobile applications.
  • Complying with regulations and meeting tough industry security standards.
  • Aids in inducing the confidence in your and your customer's mind from application security perspective.
  • Aids in mitigating security risks to your customer's data.
  • It causes better marketing opportunities for your application to sell in global markets.

Why is mobile testing being critical for business?


A fundamental part of every software development process is testing. With Mobile application not being an exception: the upsurge in the number of mobile devices generate a massive operation system fragmentation, screen sizes, and more. This is the reason; QA teams are making immense attempts to ensure the user’s seamless experience across various mobile devices without functionality issues and bugs. The product team can enhance the app's ratings, as well as customer satisfaction for valuable referrals for even more downloads, by putting the mobile application through rigorous testing.



OWASP Mobile Security Top-10 Attacks

Category Attack Type
M1 Improper Platform Usage
M2 Insecure Data Storage
M3 Insecure Communication
M4 Insecure Authentication
M5 Insufficient Cryptography
M6 Insecure Authorization
M7 Client Code Quality
M8 Code Tampering
M9 Reverse Engineering
M10 Extraneous Functionality

We also follow our expert's checklist on Mobile applications security for manual testing. Manual testing helps in digging deep into the application and its functionalities to find security vulnerabilities.

Find more about : How to test android app security, Mobile App Testing

Tools used by best VAPT Companies


  1. ImmuniWeb MobileSuite: The Mobile App Security Test is a free online tool that aids in performing privacy and security tests of iOS and Android mobile applications. The service includes the following platforms to test mobile applications:

    • Android: Native Applications and Hybrid Applications (Cordova, PhoneGap, React, Xamarin).
    • iOS: Native Applications and Hybrid Applications (Cordova, PhoneGap, React, Xamarin).

    A broad spectrum of most common vulnerabilities and weaknesses, including OWASP Mobile Top 10 is detected promptly. Also, it provides a user-friendly report of the discovered issues. The following automated tests of the mobile application are provided:

    • Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
    • Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
    • Behavior Testing for malicious functionality and privacy
    • Software Composition Analysis
    • Mobile Application Outgoing Traffic
    • External Communications and Outgoing Traffic


  2. Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP): An easy-to-use integrated penetration testing tool- The Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP), is used to find vulnerabilities in applications.
    The tool is created to be used by a broad range of people ranging from people with security experience to developers and functional testers who are new to penetration testing.
    ZAP contains a set of tools that allow you to find security vulnerabilities manually as well as automated scanners. ZAP crawls the application with its spider and passively scans each page it finds. Then ZAP utilizes its active scanner to attack all of the detected parameters, pages and functionality.


  3. Kiuwan: Kiuwan is a powerful, end-to-end application security platform. The ultimate code security tool that all developers need - Kiuwan, is used for detecting security vulnerabilities in source code, enforcing coding guidelines, and managing open-source components so developers can eliminate defects and improving application security.


  4. QARK: A free android app scanner - QARK (Quick Android Review Kit), is used to find security vulnerabilities. This tool lists out security vulnerabilities and enables extracting the source code from apk file. This tool is one of the tools to provide some good issues and observations for android mobile apk, but not a extensive one.
    Vulnerabilities related to exported intents, components, cryptography related issues, configuration related to files, improper x.509 certificate validation, activities, private keys embedded in the source, WebView configurations, activities, Tapjacking etc. have been found by using this tool.


  5. Codified Security: An automated smart security test working to discover vulnerabilities rapidly - Codified Security, integrates with your delivery cycles seamlessly. Also, it allows you to set your compliance levels and lets you create your own static analysis engine rules. The risks of your mobile applications and a list of actions to mitigate security breaches are clearly highlighted in our professional security reports.


  6. Veracode: Both dynamic (automated penetration test) and static (automated code review) code analysis is executed by Veracode and it aids in finding security vulnerabilities comprising of malicious code along with the lack of functionality that may cause security breaches. Veracode aids in determining if precise encryption is employed and checking if a piece of software contains any application backdoors through hard-coded user names or passwords. Veracode uses methodologies developed and continually refined by a team of world-class experts and its binary scanning approach produces more accurate testing results. Developers can spend more time remediating problems and less time sifting through non-threats as Veracode returns fewer false positives.


  7. Mobile Security Framework (MobSF): An automated, mobile application (Android/iOS/Windows) pen-testing package, that aids in malware analysis and contains a security assessment framework efficient in executing static and dynamic analysis, is Mobile Security Framework (MobSF). Mobile app binaries such as (APK, XAPK, IPA & APPX) as well as zipped source code are supported by MobSF. Also, for seamless integration with your CI/CD or DevSecOps pipeline, it provides REST APIs. The task of Dynamic Analyzer is to implement interactive instrumented testing and runtime security assessment.


  8. AndroBugs: A vulnerability analysis system, especially for android, that assists hackers or developers in finding potential security vulnerabilities in Android applications, is AndroBugs Framework. It is the most competent (consuming averagely less than 2 minutes per scan) and more accurate, but has no fancy GUI.
    Looks for security flaws in Android applications. Examines an application's code for best practices violations and an app's security features. Determines whether or not a program makes use of a specific cross-platform development framework (such as Xamarin, Flutter, or React Native) or uses any potentially harmful shell commands (such as 'su'). Due to the parallel enormous analysis function, a huge number of applications may be scanned in a short amount of time. Locates base64 encoded strings and decodes them.

Serious Mobile Application Vulnerabilities Found


  1. SQLi: Fully functional databases like the SQLite are used in android apps, therefore just like SQL Server or MySQL box they can be vulnerable to SQL injection. SQL injection; To give hackers access to a database or unauthorized logins typically by adding data to the query string or adding data in a form field is how SQL injection works. SQL Injection can be used to attack Activities, but it is generally used to attack a web service or Web Views.
    The use of dynamic or concatenated SQL queries is the root cause of the SQL Injection vulnerability. The user can supply SQL attack vectors rather than valid inputs and manipulate the backend SQL query, if SQL queries are constructed by concatenating user supplied inputs.


  2. Vulnerable file upload (spyware): Attackers can inject malicious content into the application server if it has a file upload vulnerability.
    An attacker can upload and execute a shell that runs commands, browses local resources, system files; exploits the local vulnerabilities, or attacks other servers, to compromise the server. The application can be vulnerable to client-side attacks such as XSS or Cross-site Content Hijacking, if malicious files are uploaded. On client side, the vulnerabilities in broken libraries/applications (e.g. iPhone MobileSafari LibTIFF Buffer Overflow) might be triggered by uploaded files. Also, vulnerabilities in broken libraries/applications on the server side (e.g. ImageMagick flaw that called ImageTragick!) might be triggered by uploaded files. For hosting troublesome files including illegal software, and malwares, the file storage server might be abused. Internal information such as server internal paths might be disclosed in the error messages.


  3. Privilege Escalation: The act of exploiting a bug, configuration oversight or design flaw in a software application or operating system to gain upgraded access to resources that are usually protected from an application or user is Privilege escalation.

    Generally becoming an admin user, to gain more access than required is tried by a non-admin user. Privilege escalation has 2 types:

    • Privilege elevation, also known as Vertical privilege escalation, is a PE where functions or content reserved for higher privilege users or applications is accessed by a lower privilege user or application (e.g. Accessing site administrative functions by Internet banking users or bypassing the password for a smartphone)
    • Accessing functions or content reserved for other normal users by a normal user is Horizontal privilege escalation (e.g. Internet Banking User A and B access each other's account)


  4. Lack of encryption (leaking sensitive info): Due to lack of correct sensitive or important data encryption, this flaw exists. Improper data encryption can't guarantee appropriate confidentiality, integrity and accountability of the system. Attackers can easily gain sensitive information because of the application not using a secure channel like SSL. Malicious users can also to modify application data due to this vulnerability. During Architecture and Design, Implication stages, this flaw is introduced.


  5. Cross-Site Scripting: A type of script injection in which is executed by injecting malicious scripts into application forms is Cross site Scripting (XSS) attack. When a malicious code is sent using an application, in the form of a browser side script, to a different end user, Cross Site Scripting attacks occurs. These attacks are possible because of the flaws that are widespread and can happen anywhere in the application, where input from a user is used and output is generated without encoding or validating the input.
    Attackers employ a variety of methods (such as Unicode) in encoding the malicious part of the tag in order to make the request look legit to the user. Generally, XSS attacks are in the form of embedded JavaScript.


How do you security test a mobile app?


We follow a systematic and yet agile approach to test mobile App security. This helps our customers gain extremely accurate and elaborate results. We follow OWASP Top 10 standard to find and report vulnerabilities. While we do use automated tools, we focus more on manual testing to mimic the real-life hackers.
IOS specific checks: How to test iOS app security
Android specific checks: How to test android app security


What is the key difference between mobile device testing and mobile application testing?


Mobile device testing evaluates the quality of a device by confirming its hardware and software functionality. This procedure attempts to evaluate aspects such as the screen, memory, camera, and apps. It also includes factory and certification testing.
Conversely, mobile application testing is running the app on many mobile devices to guarantee consistency and operation. Following this procedure, you may assess the quality of the targeted app, determining whether it is well-suited for the device in terms of hardware, software, network connectivity, and so on.


What is end-to-end mobile testing?


End-to-end mobile testing is a comprehensive technique of verifying software systems from start to finish to ensure the application flow is working as anticipated. It describes the system mandates and confirms all the integrated pieces work together as needed and as per security guidelines.


What are the common bugs found in mobile testing?


Some of the common bugs are:

  • Compatibility crash bugs
  • Performance issues
  • UI and UX bugs
  • Network related issues
  • Memory Leakage
  • Slow Responses
  • Permission issues

What are the vulnerabilities related to mobile app security?


Common mobile app security vulnerabilities are:

  • Weak server-side controls
  • Insecure data storage
  • Insufficient Transport Layer protection
  • Security misconfiguration
  • Sensitive data Exposure
  • Inadequate logging and monitoring

What is the goal of security testing?


The goal of security testing is to Identify threats in the system, measure the potential vulnerabilities of the system, help in detecting possible security risks in the system and help the developers in fixing these problems.


How to choose automated testing over manual testing for mobile testing?


Manual testing is suitable when the test cases are run once or twice. Therefore, there is no frequent repetition of test cases. Automated testing is suitable when the test cases need to run repeatedly for a long duration of time.


What are the benefits of application security?


Using the Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) approach gives an organization a more detailed view of the threats facing its applications, enabling the business to better protect its systems and data from malicious attacks.


Our Culture

Valency Networks is a very agile, friendly and fun loving atmosphere and yet we maintain a cutting edge technical vibrant work environment.