Mobile Application Penetration Testing Services

Our mobile app penetration testing service are designed to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities before it’s too late. Mobile applications have changed the way we work and communicate. Our tailored approach checks for flaws or exploits that could lead to your data being compromised.

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What is mobile application penetration testing?

A mobile app pen testing is performed to identify any mobile application vulnerabilities that could lead to data loss. This security assessment, also known as mobile application security testing, is dynamic in nature, meaning it is conducted while the application is functioning.

Our thorough mobile app pentesting services concentrate on key areas of the mobile attack surface i.e. Reverse engineering, Data at rest, Data in transit, web services and APIs.

Common mobile security flaws during

iOS and Android app pentesting

For a mobile application to support confidentiality, integrity and availability of a system and its data, a mobile application has to ensure app’s security posture on many fronts with a mobile application security assessment.

Weak Server Side Controls are primary target because any communication outside the mobile devices occurs via server.

Insecure Data Storage as sometimes developers depend upon the client storage for data. This is commonly found in our mobile application penetration testing services.

Transport Layer Protection includes encrypted routes through which the data is transferred/received to/from the server.

A threat actor who can easily reverse the application code to find flaws that can be exploited, or injecting malware is a serious concern. Binary Protection is important to secure the mobile applications installed on phones.

Data Leakage due to application bugs, residual data on the device or lack of secure coding practices.

Most importantly, don’t forget to get your mobile application independently validated against application controls.

Benefits ofmobile app penetration testing services

Assess real-world mobile app security vulnerabilities

Our mobile app pen testing assesses real-world mobile app security vulnerabilities in a number of ways. One common approach is to reverse engineer the app to understand how it works and identify any potential vulnerabilities.

Another approach is to analyze the app’s traffic to see if there are any suspicious or untrusted requests being made. Finally, consider running a static analysis tool on the code to identify any potential issues.

Validate secure design best practices

By identifying potential security vulnerabilities in the mobile app design, our mobile application pentesting service can help to validate secure design best practices. For example, it helps to identify if any sensitive data is being stored insecurely on the device, if authentication methods are effective and if there are any loopholes that could be exploited by a malicious user.

Increased flexibility and productivity of users through secure mobile offerings

The main benefit of mobile app pen testing is the increased flexibility and productivity it offers users. With this service, businesses can easily assess the security of their hybrid mobile apps and identify potential vulnerabilities. This helps them to safeguard their data and improve the overall mobile app security of their operations.

Ensure strong authentication, authorisation, encryption mechanisms

By using our mobile pen testing service, organisations can ensure that their authentication, authorisation, and encryption mechanisms are functioning properly. It simulate an attacker’s actions, allowing companies to test the security of their mobile apps and systems in a controlled environment.

Find mobile app or device loopholes to avoid data leakage or theft

A mobile pen test is an essential security measure to find and fix potential vulnerabilities in mobile apps and devices. By identifying weaknesses and improving security, organisations can avoid disastrous data breaches that could jeopardise customer information or Damage corporate reputation.

PCI DSS, ISO 27001, Compliance Support

There are many compliance frameworks out there, each with their own specific requirements. Our mobile application security testing can help support your organisation’s compliance with mobile security framework such as PCI DSS and ISO 27001.

A trusted partner, not a 'report and run' consultancy

Types of Mobile Pentesting

OWASP Top 10 Mobile Pentesting Vulnerabilities

Improper Platform Usage

Any violation of published guidelines or functionality misuse such as excessive permissions usage.

It may include platform permissions, TouchID misuse, keychain secrets or other mobile OS features specific to an iOS device or android apps.

Insecure Data Storage

Data stored insecurely includes examples such as SQL databases, log files, binary data stores, cookies, SD card, cloud synched. This could also relate to unintended data leakage vulnerabilities from the operating system, frameworks, hardware or rooted/jailbroken devices.

Insecure Communication

Anything related to insecure data transmission between two points. This data transmission could encompass mobile to mobile communications and application to server communications and data encryption risks related to technologies in use.

Insecure Authentication

Authentication vulnerabilities are one of the critical attack vectors for a cyber criminal. This phase includes assessing authentication mechanism, transmission channels, nature of input, insecure configurations, weak credentials & bypass attempts.

Insufficient Cryptography

Insecure use of cryptography is common in mobile applications leveraging encryption. Business impact of such issues could lead to privacy violations, information theft, IP theft or reputational implications.

Insecure Authorization

Whether it is possible to access unauthorised functionality by exploiting Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerabilities, hidden endpoints.

Client Code Quality

Insecure coding practices cause security impacts where application code and the device side of mobile application is affected.

Code Tampering

Whether an application performs code integrity checks to prevent code tampering and modifying at an attackers’ will. Mobile applications developed for certain business verticals may have severe implications of code modification such as in gaming sector, compared to others.

Reverse Engineering

Due to the inherent nature of the code, most applications can be reverse-engineered. Although this helps an attacker to understand the underlying code, an application must ensure various defences to avoid IP theft or allow exploitations of any vulnerabilities.

Extraneous Functionality

Any hidden or undocumented features that can be identified and exploited to gain access to underlying systems hosting vulnerable code.

Top Mobile Security Risks

Mobile Pen Testing Tools

MobSF is a mobile security framework (open source framework) used for android pen testing and malware analysis
Burp Suite
Charles Proxy
Drozer
Frida
Clutch
greenDAO Studio
iNalyzer
Introspy-Android
Jad Decompiler

The above list covers the main tools, however, this is not the comprehensive list used during every security assessment. OWASP has released a Mobile Security Testing Guide (MSTG), which covers the types of attacks that can be launched against mobile applications and how to test for them. This guide is intended for security professionals who want to assess the security of mobile apps, and it provides specific instructions on how to do so.

Security assessments of mobile applications provides you an accurate view of risks affecting your mobile applications, supporting APIs that may be common to web applications or even the backend issues. This helps to assess, analyse and mitigate identified vulnerabilities.

Why choose Cyphere as your penetration testing service provider?

Excellent people to work with.

Very good knowledge of requirement and give us correct findings with excellent remedy to improve our security for our B2B portal site.

Harman was great, really knowledgeable

Harman was great, really knowledgeable, helpful and on hand to answer any questions. The final report was very clear providing the technical information in an easy to read format which could be understood by the leaders of the business.

My experience of the team was 5 star.

They were so helpful, and their technical delivery and client communication were excellent.

Extremely satisfied

Extremely satisfied with approach, speed and end results. Thanks.

Penetration Testing : What is it? Types, Approach,
Methodologies & Costs

Mobile Application PenetrationTesting Methodology

When you decide to give us the go-ahead for mobile penetration testing, our very first step is to gain insight into your motivation, so that we can advise on your real concerns. The comprehensive process we go through to understand this determines the vision for the project. At the technical level, this includes assets to be included, their fragility and importance to the environment.

Based on the response received from the reconnaissance phase, the target list for mobile app penetration testing is prioritised. The priority would be based on “low-hanging” fruit that could aid in gaining a foothold within the network trivially.

ur penetration testers would focus on the top 10 categories of mobile security attacks defined by the industry-standard OWASP. This includes areas such as platform misuse, insecure communication, encryption vulnerabilities, injection issues such as SQL injection, XSS, XXE, insecure authentication and authorisation flaws and any code tampering issues.

Web server hosting of the android applications and ios apps is also considered a vital component during mobile app testing. A weakness in supporting infrastructure including the configuration of the webserver could lead to a slight compromise of the application hosted on it.

Modern mobile applications (including mobile) rely on API’s for their features / functionalities. Once the endpoints are identified – during network as well as static analysis – these would be further assessed. Weak endpoints could lead to trivial functionality bypass or sometimes, potential denial of service scenarios.

Following the initial run, the app would create several files / data which would be stored in the app folder on the device. These files would be analyzed in our mobile application penetration test is to understand the storage mechanism. This analysis would reveal if any app sensitive data including session management tokens, passwords are stored in clear text on the device itself.

Our reports are comprehensive and include all the evidence that supports our findings. We give you a risk rating that considers how likely an attack is as well as the impact it could have. We don’t create panic scenarios. Our mitigation is detailed, covering both strategic and tactical areas to help our clients prepare a remediation plan.

Mobile Application Penetration Testing Services

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