What is Penetration Testing in Mobile Applications? Detailed Guide

Before taking a deep dive into the intricacies of Mobile Application Penetration Testing, it is very important for us to first comprehend the meaning of “Penetration Testing”

To put it in a nutshell, Penetration Testing is ethical hackers (white hat hackers) impersonating the malicious minds and strategies of unethical hackers (black hat hackers) to secure an organization from attack vectors, using which an unethical hacker can do any kind of harm to the organization, thus resulting in the fulfillment of the malicious intentions.

In layman’s terms, its “good guys getting paid to impersonate the bad guys so that the actual bad guys cannot use the same strategy to harm the organization in any way possible”

Needless to say, Mobile Applications are now a part of a bigger ecosystem, almost anything of the modern internet is connected and can be accessed through a smartphone.

There Is no doubt that such a rapid increase in the users of Mobile Applications would lead to an increased attack surface that would need to be secured. This is where “Mobile Application Penetration Testers” come into play.

Mobile Application Penetration Testers test the Mobile Application’s Infrastructure and look for possible security issues that could be leveraged by an attacker to cause harm to its users and affect the goodwill of the organization.

Types of Mobile Applications Organizations Use:

There are three types of applications that organizations use majorly:

• Native Mobile Apps

• Hybrid Apps

• Progressive Web Apps

Native Mobile Applications

Native apps are designed particularly for the operating system of a mobile device (OS). As a result, you may have native Android mobile applications or native iOS apps and all the other platforms and devices. Because they are designed for a single platform, you cannot mix and match them — for example, you cannot use a Blackberry app on an Android phone or an iOS app on a Windows phone.

Hybrid Mobile Applications

These applications, like native apps, may be installed on devices and run through web browsers. HTML5 is the programming language used to create any hybrid apps. Although hybrid applications are not as quick or as dependable as native apps, they are more capable of expediting the development process. Because you don't have to design and manage apps for many platforms, your company may save time and money. It's best suited for apps that primarily offer content.

Progressive Web Apps

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are website extensions that you may store on your computer or device and use as an app. PWAs take advantage of web browser APIs and functionalities to provide a native app-like experience across devices. It is a form of the webpage that may be uploaded to your devices or computer systems in order to simulate a web application. PWAs operate quickly independent of the operating system or device type.

Stages of Mobile Application Penetration Testing:

The entire flow of the Mobile Application Penetration Test broadly comprises of 4 steps in total:

1. Discovery

2. Assessment/Analysis

3. Exploitation

4. Reporting

Discovery

The most crucial aspect of a penetration test is intelligence collection. The ability to detect hidden indicators that might point to the presence of a vulnerability could be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful pentest.

Discovery in the context of the Mobile Application Penetration testing has three steps in totality, namely:

i) OSINT (Open Source Intelligence):

The pentester looks up information about the application on the Internet. This might be obtained on search engines and social networking sites, or it could be leaked source code from source code repositories, developer forums, or even the dark web.

ii)Understanding the Platform:

It is critical for the penetration tester to understand the mobile application platform, even from an outside perspective, in order to help in the development of a threat model for the application. The pentester considers the firm behind the app, its business rationale, and the parties involved. Internal structures and processes are also considered.

iii) Client-Side vs Server-Side Scenarios:

The penetration tester must grasp the type of application (native, hybrid, or web) and work on the test cases. The network interfaces of the program, user data, connectivity with external resources, session management, and jailbreaking/rooting behavior are all taken into account. Security concerns are also taken into account; for example, does the app interface with firewalls? Databases or any kind of server? How safe is this?

Assessment/Analysis

The Analysis phase is divided into two categories:

1. Static Analysis

2. Dynamic Analysis

Static Analysis:

During static analysis, the penetration tester does not execute the application. The analysis is done on the provided files or decompiled source code.

Dynamic Analysis:

The pentester reviews the mobile application as it runs on the device. Reviews done include forensic analysis of the file system, assessment of the network traffic between the application and server and an evaluation of the application’s inter-process communication endpoints(Content Providers, Intents, Broadcast Receivers, Deeplinks, Activities, and Services,)

Exploitation

The pentester attacks the mobile application using the information gathered during the information collecting procedure. Thorough intelligence collection ensures a high possibility of effective exploitation, and hence a successful enterprise.

The pentester attempts to attack the vulnerability in order to get sensitive information or carry out harmful operations, and then execute privilege escalation to elevate to the most privileged user (root) in order to avoid any constraints on the activity carried out.

The pentester then continues to operate within the hacked device. This simply implies that he or she runs modules that allow for backdooring the device in order to demonstrate the capacity to accomplish future access.

Reporting

A good report communicates to management in simple language, clearly indicating the discovered vulnerabilities, consequences to the business, and possible remediation or recommendations.

The vulnerabilities must be risk-rated and proper technical communication done for the technical personnel, with a proof of concept included supporting the findings uncovered.

Conclusion

The Mobile app Penetration Testing technique contributes to greater transparency and reproducibility in mobile penetration testing. It is a holistic approach with sufficient flexibility and improves the security of mobile applications. The process employs rigorous intelligence collecting, analysis, and exploitation, as well as transparent presentation/reporting of the findings to both management and the technical team.