According toxn--research-iia, the mobile application industry is one of the fastest-growing globally; the Google Play Store adds approximately 1,300 new apps each day, while the Apple App Store adds about 1,000 each day.

As companies and organizations try to create great, innovative and functional mobile applications, they also have to improve their security.

This article talks about MobSF, an open-source mobile application security tool, and how it helps governments, startups and established companies build secure and efficient mobile applications.

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What is Mobile Application Security, and Why is it Crucial?

Source credits: Google

Mobile application security describes those security measures put in place in mobile applications to prevent attacks from malicious hackers and stealing of private, personal and financial data. It includes the security inspection & examination that happen during application development and design. Still, it also involves techniques and methods used to protect mobile apps after they get deployed and distributed.

\n Mobile application security is the process of creating, including, testing and implementing security features within applications to prevent security vulnerabilities against threats such as unauthorized entry and illegal modification of source code.

\n In simple words, mobile application security is simply protecting Mobile Applications (applications like Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook, etc.) from external threats likeMalware and other digital frauds that risk the personal and financial data of mobile application users.

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Why is Mobile Application Security Important to Companies and Organizations?

Protection of User Information

When the security of your mobile application is weak, hackers can use a trojan and gain access to the personal details put into the app by the user’s details like date of birth, passwords, birth certificates etc.

The Anubis banking Trojan is a good example of a case in this category. The trojan enters the user’s device when the user downloads malware-infected [apps, some of which are even hosted on the official app stores of Android. Once the trojan gets access to the user’s phone through permissions granted the mobile application, it is then able to send and receive SMSs, read contact lists, request permission to access device location, allow push notifications, and determine the IP address of the mobile connection along with access to the user’s personal and private files.

Even an app like WhatsApp is a victim of a lack of solid and functional mobile app security. Sometime in the year 2019, WhatsApp acknowledged that its app was vulnerable to spyware from an Israeli firm called the Niv Shaleva and Omri(NSO) group that could infect a mobile device simply by calling a WhatsApp user on an unknown number it wouldn’t even matter if the user picked the call or not. Once infected, the spyware can send almost all the user’s data, including the user’s contact lists, GPS information, media files, etc., from the user’s device to the hacker’s server where the hacker can access it.

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Safeguarding Users’ Financial Information

Mobile applications that process the payment on their platforms like Shopify need to pay extra care to mobile application security as they handle the users’ financial information.

Hackers who can get past the mobile app security of the apps listed above can get financial data of users data like; credit card numbers, debit card numbers etc. and this could be used to make illegal transactions using user’s accounts, particularly in cases where an OTP (one time password) is not required.

Kaspersky antivirus researchers have discovered a new version of the famous banking Trojan Ginp, which can steal users’ credentials and credit card information from the user’s mobile device. It gains access to users’ mobile devices through their SMS apps; the trojan’s code manipulated mobile applications of 24 Spanish banks.

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Protection of App Rights

Mobile application security helps protect the right of the mobile application company to distribute and earn revenue from their mobile app.

When a mobile application becomes hugely successful, hackers gain the codebase (source code) of the application and use it to create their clones illegally or steal the company’s intellectual property.

The more successful a mobile application app is, the more clones that will be built and made available on the mobile app stores. For example, when Fortnite and PUBG Mobile became popular, they were not available on google’s play store. Still, many clones soon became known because of how popular the game was and the massive demand for it. It got so bad that at one point, google play had to warn its users that Fortnite wasn’t available for download on the play store to prevent the cloning from taking place.

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Safeguarding Against Revenue Loss

Many applications offer premium subscriptions to their user’s apps like Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Tinder etc. And this serves as a way for the app creators to earn income and monetize their apps.

But without excellent and functional mobile application security to enforce this, it becomes possible to make use of those premium features without payment.

A few years ago, the mobile security company Bluebox revealed the techniques used by malicious hackers to access the premium features of popular apps like Hulu and Tinder; how they exploited security holes in them and caused losses to their owners. At the time of the infiltration, Hulu’s monthly subscriptions were being offered at $7.99 a month for its Over The Top (OTT) streaming service.

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Increase in Users Confidence

At the center of every business lies the confidence of customers in the businesses brand; if your mobile application is lacking security-wise and this becomes public knowledge for hackers apart from the inevitable loss of crucial user data, you could also face a lot of lawsuits from angered users which would, in turn, reduce user trust in your platform and as a result of this reduce revenue input.

If you have good application security, then your users will feel comfortable while using your append; this will, in turn, increase revenue streams for you.

MobSF, as we stated earlier, is a mobile security tool that makes it very easy to build excellent and functional security for mobile applications.

To begin…

What is MobSF?

Mobile Security Framework AKA MobSF is an automated, open-source, all-in-one mobile application (Android/iOS/Windows) pen-testing framework capable of performing static, dynamic and malware analysis.

\n In simple words, MobSF is an automated framework that automates and hereby makes it easy to build functional and secure security for mobile applications.

It is used to perform analysis on Windows, Android and IOS mobile applications for the presence of malicious software, which could in any way make the mobile application susceptible to outside attack.

Now we know what MobSF is, let’s look at how to…

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Why Should Companies and Other Organizations Use MobSF For Their Mobile Application Security?

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OWASP MSTG Backed

OWASP MSTG suggests MobSF for static analysis of security in mobile applications.

\n According to itswebsite, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation that works to improve software security. Through community-led open-source software projects, hundreds of local chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and leading educational and training conferences, the OWASP Foundation is the source for developers and technologists to secure the web.

The Mobile Security Test Guide (MSTG) is a guide created by the Open Web Application Security Project to serve as a comprehensive manual for mobile app security testing and reverse engineering for iOS and Android mobile security testers.

In simple words, OWASP MSTG is the mobile application security industry standard set by the mobile Application community for mobile application security. It is widely adopted by more than seven thousand mobile Application developers around the world.

The OWASP MSTG backs MobSF as a solid mobile application security framework for Companies, Organizations and governments.

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Effective and Fast Analysis of Mobile Applications

The MobSF security framework supports APK, IPA & APPX; therefore, it can be used for functional and rapid application security analysis of Android, iOS and Windows mobile applications.

MobSF helps to effectively and quickly analyze Android, IOS and Windows applications for mobile application security issues and malicious software, which could make a mobile app open to foreign attacks.

The MobSF framework also provides support for the APK, IPA & APPX binaries, which are the package file formats for Android mobile apps, Apple mobile apps and windows applications, respectively.

MobSF helps provide support for analyzing applications created for these platforms and analysis for plain source code without any package file format.

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Android Dynamic Application Testing at Runtime

MobSF is also a DAST tool, i.e., it can perform dynamic application testing at runtime for Android apps.

A DAST tool is a mobile application security tool solution that helps mobile application developers find application security vulnerabilities in mobile applications while they are in production.

In simple words, MobSF helps to detect flaws in your android app while it is in production. That means you don’t need to stop your app from running in order to detect and fix a security flaw MobSF does that for you.

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Web API Fuzzing Capability

MobSF has Web API fuzzing capabilities powered by CapFuzz.

Web API fuzzing is simply the act of changing API operation parameters to unexpected random values in an effort to cause unexpected behavior in the API backend. This helps you to discover bugs and potential security issues.

MobSF uses a mobile application security tool called CapFuzz, a web API security scanner to capture, intercept, and fuzz web APIs.

In simple words, MobSF helps you fuzz your API using the tool CapFuzz to find vulnerabilities in the backend that could be manipulated by hackers and enables you to seal those holes, thus improving your mobile application security.

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Seamless CI/CD & DevSecOps Pipeline Integration

The MobSF framework design makes it very easy to integrate your mobile application using CI/CD and DevSecOps integration pipelines.

Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) is a method used in application development that helps developers deliver apps to customers efficiently by introducing automation into the app development stages.

Development, Security and Operations (DevSecOps) is a framework that enables app developers to implement security policies simultaneously and speed as they implement regular development operation decisions and actions.

In simple words, CI/CD and DevSecOps are a way for you to deploy, implement and monitor your mobile application securely.

MobSF makes it very easy for you to seamlessly test with MobSF, deploy, integrate and monitor your mobile Mobile Application using CI/CD & DevSecOps.

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Hosted on Local Environment

MobSF hosts your work on a local environment when performing Mobile Application Security tasks, and testing is done using the MobSF CLI, so sensitive data never interacts with the cloud.

In other words (tired of using in simple words), whatever sensitive work you do when using MobSF will in no way be accessed through the internet until you are ready to deploy your mobile application.

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Amazing Graphics UI and Dashboard

The MobSF mobile application security framework tool is used in the form of a web service that consists of a dashboard that presents the results of your application security analysis, the site’s documentation, an inbuilt emulator which emulates all devices ranging from Android top iOS phones and the dashboard grants access to an API which allows the users to activate mobile application analysis automatically.

Below are the snapshots of the MobSF web application.

Source credits: Google

Source credits: Google

Source credits: Google

Points to Note

Mobile application security describes those security measures put in place in mobile applications to prevent attacks from malicious hackers and stealing of private, personal and financial data.
Mobile Security Framework AKA MobSF is an automated, open-source, all-in-one mobile application (Android/iOS/Windows) pen-testing framework capable of performing static, dynamic and malware analysis.

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Why MobSF is the Best for Mobile Application Security?

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MobSF is supported by the Open Web Application Security Project Mobile Testing Guide (OWASP MSTG) for static security analysis in mobile applications.

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The MobSF security framework supports APK, IPA & APPX. Therefore, it can be used for functional and rapid application security analysis of Android, iOS and Windows mobile applications.

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MobSF has Web API fuzzing capabilities powered by CapFuzz.

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MobSF is designed to make your CI/CD or DevSecOps pipeline integration seamless.

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MobSF hosts your work in a local environment. Testing is done using the [MobSF CLI so your data won’t be open to malicious hackers as it would be if it were hosted on the cloud or a public webserver.

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The MobSF mobile application security framework tool is used in the form of a web service which consists of a dashboard that presents the results of security analysis, its own documentation site, an integrated emulator & an API.

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MobSF is a DAST tool, i.e.; it can perform dynamic application testing at runtime for Android apps.

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==Useful Links==

MobSF GitHub Repo
MobSF DOcumentation
How to Set Up MobSF
How to Analyse Mobile Applications using MobSF
Installation and Use of MobSF
MobSF Static Analysis
ios Security Analysis using MobSF
Opening MobSF using Docker

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Conclusion

Mobile application security is a huge problem. A lot of companies, startups and organizations lose vast amounts of money from a lack of functional and efficient mobile app security.

MobSF is here to change that. The framework makes it easy to test, sustain and deploy secure mobile applications. It was built intuitively and can serve even the most inexperienced of mobile developers.

Well, this is the end of the article. I hope you’ve seen how excellent and essential MobSF is and why it is vital you use it on your next project.

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Happy Building

Importance of MobSF for the Mobile Security of Companies, Organizations and Governments