Tag: mobile threats

Enterprises of all size need to understand their app vulnerabilities and how to mitigate risk.

Mobile application testing is a critical practice in safeguarding apps and keeping you and your users safe from all types of attack.

A comprehensive mobile app security strategy includes the right tests, shielding and practices.

The first step of effective security strategy is through mobile application testing.  It has rapidly grown in importance as smartphones, tablets, and wearables have become ubiquitous worldwide.  The trend toward using these devices for banking, payments, shopping and other activities using sensitive private and financial information has increased the appeal of these devices to cybercriminals and digital vandals. Banks and corporations are boosting their security, as should anyone with an app.

More than two out of every three large enterprises have experienced a mobile data breach. Of those, each cost as much as $3 million per year. Increasingly, attacks are reaching smaller companies as well, as criminals have built strategies around breaching mid-sized and even smaller sized businesses. The estimated cost of mobile cyber breaches worldwide has reached $50 billion per year and rising.

Mobile application testing helps mitigate the rapidly rising spectrum of security risks.

Three out of every 5 mobile apps are currently vulnerable to attacks. Sixty-seven percent of apps manipulate user data. When taking into consideration that 59 percent of Android apps and 42 percent of iOS apps exfiltrate data, and 78 percent of mobile threats are through apps, this issue simply cannot be taken seriously enough.

Eighty three percent of organizations hire outside developers to create their apps, and 25 percent do not take adequate steps for securing those apps. To prevent security breaches and minimize any that do occur, it is critical to uncover security vulnerabilities in every component of the application’s environment.  It’s vital to discover the issues before attackers can find them and exploit them.

Mobile application testing is the core strategy for identifying those security vulnerabilities.

A mobile application testing tool like Pradeo Mobile can provide the solution enterprises require to protect themselves from such vulnerabilities and unexpected behaviors.  This threat detection technology employs patented artificial intelligence (AI) processes for spotting and qualifying behaviors and vulnerabilities with exceptional precision.  Since its inception, this platform has detected billions of unexpected behaviors and vulnerabilities.

This mobile app security testing tool allows you to:

• Choose the way the service is implemented, including in SaaS, On Premise, or as an API for integration within the System Development Life Cycle, depending on the organization’s needs.
• Use a pre-defined security policy or choose to customize one to best reflect the specifics of the business. This can help to ensure that the only threats that are flagged are those that will be relevant to the company.
• The Pradeo mobile application testing tool leverages next-generation technology to conduct solid and reliable static and dynamic analysis. From there, vulnerabilities, as well as simple and complex behaviors, can be identified with precision.
• Receive a custom-generated security status and detailed report laid out for at-a-glance comprehensive views of the security levels of your app and threats that may be present.

Trustworthy and reliable mobile application testing makes it possible to identify and automatically remedy unwanted behaviors and repackage apps as per the security policy.

Lookout has now uncovered a malware that pretends to be any of a range of very popular apps.

Lookout, a mobile security company based in San Francisco, has announced that it has discovered a new type of malware threat to devices running on the Android operating system.

This time, it is a form of malware that disguises itself as certain trusted and well-known applications.

Unfortunately, it actually opens the user up to a considerable mobile security risk as it exposes the device to root attacks. Moreover, once it has made its way into the gadget, it is nearly impossible to remove. Though this doesn’t affect people who download their applications from Google Play, it has been discovered in mobile apps that can be downloaded through third-party app stores. Among the titles the malware pretends to be includes: Facebook, Twitter, Candy Crush, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Google Now.

There were around 20,000 instances of this mobile security threat isolated by Lookout in its research.

As the versions of these popular mobile apps that are infected by the malware have been discovered exclusively in third-party app stores, the firm has stated that people who download exclusively from Google Play can more than likely assume that they are free of this infection.

What makes this mobile malware even more challenging is that the majority of the infected applications still work in the exact same way as the legitimate versions. Therefore, it becomes exceptionally difficult – if not impossible –for a regular user to be able to detect the infected ones and therefore, to know which ones to uninstall. Moreover, when root access to a mobile device has been obtained by way of the malware, the app can automatically download and can fully intertwine itself into the operating system.

This makes it very difficult for an expert to delete it and essentially impossible for an untrained user to remove it. Once the infected app becomes activated, it pushes ads into the device of the user and poses a mobile security threat. Lookout explained that it continues to operate in the background and cannot be uninstalled by the majority of users, either forcing them to buy new devices or to have to take the gadgets to IT professionals to have the malware removed.