Mobile Application Security Audit: Step-by-Step Guide

With mobile devices managing everything from financial to healthcare, security is an important aspect of the application. Alarmingly, 62% of Android apps and 93% of iOS apps harbor potential security flaws. Cybersecurity threats such as data leakage, malware, and authentication vulnerabilities are on the rise currently. As a result, it is imperative for organizations to be aware of how a mobile application security audit process reveals latent threats and implement stringent safeguards.

In this article, we explain what is mobile application security audit and discuss why app audits are critical, using real breach prices. Next, in each section, we will also specify key goals, common threats, and the general procedure. We will also discuss each of the critical tool types, useful recommendations, and the obstacles that the teams face. Last but not least, we will discuss how SentinelOne Singularity™ can protect the mobile endpoints and the frequently asked questions related to the ongoing audit.

What is a Mobile Application Security Audit?

Mobile application security audit is a process of verifying an application’s code, environment and data to check for any weak points that can cause a breach. They usually focus on the encryption methods, network transmissions, and local storage behavior to see whether the tokens are used insecurely or if the APIs are not protected. This can be performed by manual code reviews, scanner tools, or dynamic penetration testing to get a holistic view.

In many organizations, it is part of a broader application security assessment plan that checks on all the applications in an organization. It is advisable to update the mobile application security audit checklist frequently to accommodate emergent threats or library updates in the course of using the application. In this way, the teams enhance the confidence of users, ensure compliance, and minimize the risk of disastrous attacks.

Why is Mobile App Security Auditing Important?

The risks for insecure mobile apps are high as one vulnerability can compromise user credentials or private information. Are you aware that the average cost of a data breach increased to $4.88 million in 2024? Cyber criminals do not rest as they are always devising new ways through which they can be able to infiltrate devices and get hold of such data.

Conducting a mobile app security audit allows such cracks to be identified before they are exploited by the attackers. In the following section, we explain five fundamental aspects that make organizations implement stringent security measures.

1. Protecting High-Value Data: Today’s mobile apps often require users to input personal information, therefore dealing with such data as financial transactions, health records, or company’s proprietary information. And if an attacker finds a little crack, they can easily gather a goldmine of information. Mobile application security audit helps the dev teams avoid possible data leaks at the early stages of development. This approach safeguards both the image of the brand and the customers who are loyal to the brand.
2. Meeting Compliance Mandates: Legal requirements like the GDPR or the HIPAA require high levels of data protection, for instance, end-to-end encryption and user consent. An audit verifies that your mobile application complies with these legal requirements. For instance, your application security audit program logs demonstrate that you have been on the defense in case of an external review or breach inquiry. Failure to do so attracts penalties and a negative image of the company in the eyes of the public.
3. Reducing Breach Costs & Liability: When one infiltrates a network, remediation, legal action, and reputation management may become expensive endeavors. Effective auditing reduces the risks of full-scale crises to the minimum. Through code scanning and checking the secure settings, organizations reduce the time and effort required for cleanup after the breach. The integration of mobile application security assessment checklist tasks and development processes promotes stability and makes them less vulnerable to breach applications.
4. Preserving User Trust & Market Position: In the highly competitive mobile market, security is something that can help you stand out from the crowd of less scrupulous competitors. The regular implementation of mobile application security audits should be a standard that is visible to both the users and the partners. In case a minor vulnerability is identified, proper detection and resolution show the clients that their data is a priority for your brand. This helps to build stronger customer loyalty especially in today’s society, where people are more concerned with their privacy.
5. Continuous Improvement & Innovation: Audits are not just scans that happen only once; they promote constant improvement. Every identified and resolved issue contributes to the creation of new rules for coding or changes in the architecture. Eventually, such cycles establish sound security patterns that are woven into the development culture of the organization. This makes certain that the evolution of the application is in accordance with the best practices in cybersecurity.

Key Objectives of a Mobile Security Audit

A structured mobile application security audit is not as simple as just running a code to look for random bugs. Its purpose is to systematically strengthen the identification of the app’s trust boundaries and usage policies, as well as data handling.

Below, we identify five key goals that any comprehensive security audit should achieve, from identifying cryptographic weaknesses to checking compliance with policies:

1. Identify Threats and Categorize Them By Level of Danger: Auditors maintain a comprehensive list of all known or newly discovered risks, ranging from unsecured storage of data to poor SSL implementation. Each finding is also categorized by severity, which is critical, high, medium, or low, to facilitate prioritization. Thus, it is proper to address critical flaws first in order to apply protective measures as soon as possible. This approach eliminates guesswork and ensures that the remediation process is completed in the shortest time possible.
2. Validate Encryption & Authentication: One of the objectives is to ensure that the app has basic encryption and identity features in place. Is it guaranteed that user credentials are protected in the best way possible by using salting and hashing techniques? Is multi-factor authentication compulsory for the key activities in the app? These mobile application security requirements help to establish the boundaries of trust that the app provides, and their confirmation is made by the audit.
3. Review Third-Party Libraries & APIs: Most modern applications depend on other services or pieces of code to perform their functions. It confirms that libraries are current, do not contain any known CVEs, and are set with the right permissions. This integration combines the mobile application security assessment checklist with special attention to the library version. However, if an outdated library is implemented, it will negate all other security advancements.
4. Assess Data Handling & Storage: Is the user information stored in plain text, or is the data stored in containers that are not easily hackable? Is the encryption key stored in the device keychain, or the encryption key is coded in plain form as constant? An audit specifically defines the protection measures for each data flow so that no accidental disclosure occurs. This step is especially essential for industries that deal with IP and other personal information.
5. Ensure Compliance & Logging Practices: Another common requirement for regulation is the presence of logging for critical procedures. The logs sub-process of the application security audit program ensures whether they store the minimum data, whether they are rotated, and whether they are tamper-proof. Therefore, the last mobile app security audit can affirm that it is possible to identify real threats if the validation process is successful. This enables compliance with standards such as PCI-DSS or ISO 27001.

Common Vulnerabilities in Mobile Applications

Mobile apps face a number of challenges, including app-level threats, device-level threats, and insecure transmissions. Notably, advanced attackers focus on Android’s open platform and also use the iOS repackage technique.

Let us discuss five common weaknesses that a mobile application security audit may reveal.

1. Insecure Data Storage: Applications may store session tokens or user credentials locally in the device storage without encryption. This makes it rather easy for someone else to steal the information if the device is lost/stolen or if someone with ill intentions gets a hold of it. Ensuring proper encryption and device protection of local data minimizes the chances of offline attacks, therefore safeguarding the teams. Application scanning tools targeting unencrypted fields are still among the key indicators in the mobile application security assessment checklist.
2. Weak Transport Layer Protection: For any application that communicates over networks, plain text, non-encrypted connections, or outdated TLS ciphers represent a significant risk. The threats that can be posed by using this protocol include man-in-the-middle attacks, where the attacker can intercept or modify the data being transmitted. Forced HTTPS and modern TLS should be checked as a matter of course. In any case, even a small amount of data can contain personal or financial information.
3. Insufficient Authorization & Session Handling: In many apps, session tokens do not expire or do not validate the user roles properly. Another weakness is that when tokens fall into the wrong hands, attackers can use the tokens to pretend to be normal users since tokens do not expire. The short session duration is verified by auditors, logout flows are ensured, and role-based checks are made correct. The failure of these checks means a glaring infiltration route has been created.
4. Improper Input Validation: Mobile apps may search for the query or dynamic UI change from user inputs. In case these inputs are not sanitized, there is a high likelihood of injection attacks making their way through. For example, if applied to hybrid mobile frameworks, cross-site scripting is still a problem. The ability to confirm each user input or an external data feed is also checked and validated, making it an essential part of the mobile application security requirements.
5. Reverse Engineering & Code Tampering: If code obfuscation is missing, Android or iOS attackers can decompile or repackage an app. This tactic may install unauthorized spyware or change the business logic of the application for an undesirable purpose. The final version of the app that is listed on the store may not necessarily be the version of the app that the user has installed. Some of the protections against these tampering attempts include code obfuscation, certificate pinning, and signature verification.

Essential Tools for Mobile Security Audits

The modern approaches to the mobile app security audit are divided into dynamic analyzers, code scanners, and other efficient tools. They assist in familiarizing the storage with vulnerabilities, incorrect configurations, or paths of injections.

Despite the fact that each project might have different approaches, there are five main categories of auditing tools that encompass most of the programs. Let us consider these tool types in general without naming the products.

1. Static Code Analyzers: These solutions parse source code for suspicious patterns, insecure API calls, or direct references to secrets. Static analyzers that work on a line-by-line basis can detect such issues as hardcoded credentials or unvalidated inputs. Together with CI/CD, they alert about problems at the beginning of development cycles. Normally, they come up with a list of vulnerabilities that can be correlated to the level of severity.
2. Dynamic & Runtime Testing Tools: While static checks analyze the code without running the app, dynamic scanners launch the app and monitor actual data streams, memory, and network requests. They mimic bad inputs or session hijacks and log the results for any irregularities. This synergy assists in mimicking the attacker’s view, revealing weaknesses that are not apparent in the code analysis. The tools also produce scripts that emulate a real infiltration process.
3. Environment & Configuration Validators: Certain solutions audit how the app deals with some OS or device functions, such as the use of the keychain in iOS. Some of the things they do include checking for proper permissions and the integrity of the sandbox or the operating system version. These tools help minimize the risk of exploits arising from misconfigurations by first ensuring that the environment matches the requirements of the mobile applications. Integration with the dev pipeline fosters consistent environment checks.
4. Pen Testing & Fuzzing Suites: Fuzzing modules introduce random or semi-targeted inputs into an application’s endpoints in an effort to raise unhandled exceptions. Along with penetration testing frameworks, they mimic various advanced penetration scenarios. This tests how stable or resilient the app is when faced with stress or when it is subjected to inputs it was not designed to handle. Analysts use the results to look for further reasoning issues or memory corruption attack paths.
5. Dependency & License Checkers: Most mobile applications depend on third-party libraries or frameworks, which may contain vulnerabilities or licensing issues. Such tools mark the modules that are outdated or that contain vulnerabilities according to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures system. They also explain legal usage concerns for one and the other. This synergy is important for a mobile application security audit checklist that would prevent insecure or unlicensed libraries from making their way into the final builds.

Mobile Application Security Auditing: Step-by-Step

Mobile application security audit is a process that is well defined and needs to be followed in order to be successful. When a team first starts to scope, scan, and conduct reviews, they are more confident that their app has the necessary security.

Below is a general multi-phase timeline from the planning phase to the post-audit follow-up phase:

1. Define Scope & Goals: Auditors also specify which platforms (Android, iOS) or frameworks are being audited, as well as any third-party APIs. They collect architecture diagrams, code repositories, and data compliance rules that are relevant to the project. Scope setting helps in avoiding partial coverage and makes sure that the time frame is achievable. Some of the clear goals may be directed at user data encryption or the authentication process.
2. Recon & Info Gathering: Application analysts gather app metadata, dependency lists as well as system logs. They search for the app store reviews that reveal the complaints on the issues of performance or security. This phase is related to environment checks to see whether the app communicates with insecure endpoints or uses outdated certificates. The synergy fosters a baseline map of potential infiltration points.
3. Automated & Manual Analysis: Static code analyzers analyze the code without running it in order to identify potentially malicious code or code that utilizes bad APIs. On the other hand, dynamic testing tools or manual pen testing imitate attacks such as token forgery or injecting scripts into web views. This means that, by taking this approach, the coverage is widened since it uses two approaches to achieve its goal. The results are then compiled into a list of vulnerabilities, each with a severity level and the possible consequences.
4. Generate Findings & Validate Fixes: Auditors provide a list of weaknesses with suggested fixes or modifications to the design. Teams then apply those fixes, which may involve changing code or environment configurations. A retest ensures that the fix indeed addresses the flaw by reproducing the conditions of the bug to check if the problem is solved. Such synergy reaffirms the certainty that no partial solution or concealed issue prevails.
5. Report & Future Monitoring: The final deliverable often consists of a detailed report that outlines identified problems, potential risks, and recommended actions. After an audit, teams utilize the new checks deployed in the pipeline, which perform the checks for newly introduced vulnerabilities. An articulated application security audit program ensures that there is a cycle of change and that there is a standard security level.

Benefits of Mobile Application Security Auditing

Although audits require time and resources, they yield significant benefits, ranging from user confidence to consistent compliance. In this way, organizations do not wait for the code to be exploited before they start fixing it, unlike in crisis-driven patching.

Here are five key points that show why a mobile app security audit is a crucial step in the current app development process:

1. Early Detection of Severe Vulnerabilities: More often, when scanning takes place before the release of the product, critical vulnerabilities are not included in the final product. Quick fix cycles help mitigate the risks of meltdown in case an exploit is discovered. This reduces the time it takes for developers to work on a particular project, as they do not have to spend a lot of time putting out fires.
2. Bolstered Brand Reputation & Confidence: People choosing finance or healthcare apps tend to focus on guarantees of their data protection. It is advisable to present a structured approach to conducting a mobile application security audit to create an image of reliability. This reassurance can help set your service apart and keep users engaged and coming back.
3. Compliance & Regulatory Alignment: From HIPAA to PCI-DSS, audits generate documented evidence of compliance with the recommended guidelines. Adhering to mobile application security requirements prevents organizations from incurring penalties or receiving bad publicity. Thus, in the regulated fields, the consistency of security processes becomes mandatory for obtaining operating licenses and partnerships.
4. Streamlined Incident Response: In case of a breach attempt, logs from the audits show possible ways an attacker could get into the system or previous weaknesses. This readiness reduces the time it takes to detect and contain the damage, preventing further spread of the problem. The synergy helps in establishing a strong security environment and makes the staff aware of the common attack vectors.
5. Culture of Continuous Improvement: Repeating the audits in every release creates a culture of preventive approach to the problems. Developers learn security patterns, testers improve their practices, and managers consider emerging threats. In the long run, such synergy establishes a standard of good code hygiene and architecture to avoid future emergencies.

Challenges in Mobile App Security Auditing

It is crucial to recognize that mobile app audits also introduce certain challenges that stem from the nature of the platform. From different OS ecosystems to restricted security skill sets, it has always been quite challenging for organizations to develop an efficient auditing pipeline.

Here are five issues that can hinder effective mobile application security audit process:

1. Diverse OS & Device Fragmentation: While Android has thousands of device variations, which have their own custom ROMs or patches, iOS has fewer variations, but it has strict code signing and sandboxing mechanisms. This makes it difficult to have a regular scanning process because the environments may have different behavior or susceptibility to attacks. If there is no extensive testing coverage, some important infiltration angles could be missed.
2. Limited Security Expertise: Most dev teams are good with UI/UX or performance, but not necessarily with security. Skills required in auditing include the ability of reverse engineering or even cryptanalysis. Employing dedicated security engineers or outsourcing as a gap with consultants increases the cost of a project. On the other hand, a partial skill set may lead to inadequate coverage or an incorrect assessment of the severity of the situation.
3. Tool Overload & False Positives: Operating multiple scanners creates a flood of alerts for the teams, with many of them being either inconsequential or intermittent. Tuning each of these tools to avoid false positives is time-consuming. The overworked dev staff may not pay attention to repeated warnings or even fail to notice real threats. Therefore, maintaining comprehensive identification with reasonable intake still remains a challenge.
4. Short Development Cycles & Feature Demands: Some mobile applications regularly update their content to maintain user engagement or to compete with similar applications. Compressive sprints may also cut down the time that is devoted to security reviews. This rush can make it possible for new code to bypass scanning or even thorough acceptance tests. It is crucial to align the release schedules with a comprehensive mobile application security audit checklist to avoid overshadowed vulnerabilities.
5. Evolving Threat Actors & Tactics: Threat actors improve their tools and tactics, from the specific zero-day to elaborate phishing. This means that the threat environment is dynamic, which requires the modification of your scanning rules, pen-testing techniques, or the application security audit plan. A static approach remains vulnerable to new threats, and new infiltration routes remain uncovered.

Best Practices for Mobile App Security Auditing

Despite these challenges, applying best practices helps achieve a high level of standardization in the outcome of each audit. This is achieved by ensuring that the mobile application security audit is done before the application development life cycle starts, and is used to prevent vulnerabilities from being incorporated into the application in the first place.

Below are five best practices that can help organizations to enhance their mobile security:

1. Integrate Audits into the DevOps Pipeline: Instead of conducting scans at the end of a project, integrate them within each sprint. Static analysis should be run on each commit, and dynamic tests should be run before merging to a branch, especially before merging into a master branch. This integration helps to prevent the delivery of last-minute code changes or hotfixes because all the vulnerabilities are detected and resolved before the code is deployed. In the long run, the dev teams consider security as an ongoing process and not an event that occurs only once.
2. Sustain a Live Mobile Application Security Audit Checklist: Old checklists create gaps in the scanning process and fail to capture new vulnerabilities. Maintain a live document of the latest OS versions, libraries, or published CVEs. Every iteration guarantees that all members of the development team, including the QA and auditors, are working with the same scope, which excludes gaps in coverage. This approach aligns well with your overall application security audit program for optimization.
3. Employ Rigorous Threat Modeling: When starting to implement major functions, draw a data flow diagram and identify where an attacker can inject their logic. This form of identification of risk shows potential ways of penetration at the early design phase. It assists the teams in putting in place relevant controls such as encryption or multi-factor authentication. After deployment, other threat models indicate that no new vulnerabilities have been introduced.
4. Conduct Regular Code Reviews & Team Training: The first line of defense is developers themselves, that is why it is essential to improve the awareness of secure coding. Code reviews involve repeating the same mistakes again and again, for example, generating random numbers securely or providing permissions to everyone. On the other hand, the training sessions ensure that the staff is informed on new methods of infiltration. This promotes a culture of continuous learning and risk consciousness.
5. Track & Address All Findings in Workflow Tools: Each discovered vulnerability should be in the project management system, like a bug or a user story. When executed in this manner, these tasks ensure that they are prioritized, allocated, and closed out properly in the dev teams. This integration combines the scans with the daily development tasks so that each fix is emphasized. The approach prevents vulnerabilities from being overlooked because they are not large and complex issues that can be easily spotted.

How Can SentinelOne Help?

SentinelOne’s Singularity Mobile conducts continuous vulnerability scans and behavioral audits on iOS, Android, and Chrome OS devices. The agent monitors app interactions, ensuring any suspicious processes or misconfigurations are detected early. It ensures data encryption is properly enforced for data in transit and at rest, securing against interception and data breaches on mobile channels. It balances data privacy with security design, provides zero-touch deployments, and works with leading MDMs (even without MDMs as well).

Strong identity protection is also enforced across mobile apps, preventing attackers from leveraging compromised credentials or bypassing multifactor authentication. Its Offensive Security Engine with Verified Exploit Paths conducts predictive analysis to block new threats and new attack vectors before they can infect a mobile app. Continuous scanning of mobile operating system environments detects potential insider threats, lateral movement, and fileless malware events, with complete details on every event.

Robust audit logs and compliance reporting enable organizations to meet regulatory requirements like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI-DSS. These logs enable administrators to monitor app behavior and ensure security configurations are within acceptable limits. External attack and surface management capabilities also expose vulnerabilities from third-party integrations and supply chain exposures on mobile platforms.

Organizations can safeguard mobile apps and their underlying infrastructure from a range of cloud and mobile cybersecurity threats by taking advantage of SentinelOne’s mobile security audit capabilities. Singularity Platform and Singularity Endpoint solutions continuously monitor mobile device activity and network activity to detect signs of an impending attack. Its technology monitors app usage and data transmission, flagging anomalies that may indicate unauthorized access, code injection, or exploitation attempts in mobile environments.

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Conclusion

Mobile apps are now the primary interface for many interactions ranging from banking to healthcare, making them highly attractive to hackers. A mobile application security audit is a comprehensive approach to identify vulnerabilities such as insecure storage, outdated libraries, or weak encryption that a hacker might exploit. Scanning, manual testing, and reviewing the environment are ways that auditors assist dev teams to strengthen their code before malicious actors exploit it. This approach reduces total breach expenses, ensures compliance with privacy requirements, and builds users’ trust in a highly saturated market.

This way, organizations continuously improve their security – by integrating audits into the development lifecycle, having a dynamic mobile application security audit checklist, and continually reassessing new code. These audits are complemented by endpoint protection technologies such as SentinelOne Singularity that provide endpoint’s real-time protection against infiltration attempts.

So, are you ready to protect your mobile solutions from end to end? Take your mobile security to the next level request a SentinelOne Singularity demo to see how it detects threats in real-time and responds immediately.

FAQs

1. What is a Mobile App Security Audit?

It is a systematic examination of a mobile app to identify its code, environment, and data flow issues that can lead to security issues. It may comprise static and dynamic analysis, and penetration testing. An audit helps to check for insecure storage, weak encryption, or outdated libraries to prevent the exposure of user information.

These checks are usually part and parcel of the constant mobile application security audit that is conducted by the teams.

2. What Should be included in a Mobile Application Security Checklist?

The most common areas that are included in a typical mobile application security assessment list are data storage encryption, secure networking, and authentication. It also monitors the permission usage, secure log, and third-party library. Some organizations extend the checklist to meet regulatory requirements such as HIPAA or PCI-DSS. The final coverage also helps to eliminate significant blind spots in each released product version.

3. How often should Mobile apps undergo security audits?

The update frequency is dependent on the app’s complexity, the number of users, and compliance requirements. Some teams make partial checks at least once a sprint and full audits at least once a year. Some apps, especially those dealing with personal information or money, may undergo a monthly or quarterly check.

This helps to ensure that any changes made to the code or libraries are aligned with the mobile application security audit approach.

4. What is Mobile Application Security Audit Checklist?

It is a checklist that enumerates actions and verifications that must be implemented to ensure the security of a mobile application. Some of the tests may be checking TLS ciphers, inspecting keychains on iOS, or searching for open APIs. This mobile application security audit checklist guarantees that different aspects of the application are covered systematically in each cycle. By referencing it, teams are less likely to forget certain tasks or overlook something in the environment.

5. What tools are used for Mobile Application Security Assessment?

Mobile application security assessment tools range from simple source code analyzers and runtime vulnerability probes to environment probing tools that check OS settings. Some of them are aimed at identifying insecure cryptography or unrecognized SSL certificates. Penetration testing frameworks mimic actual attack scenarios that can be used against a target.

In conclusion, all of these fall under the umbrella of an application security audit program for structural coverage, which consists of both scanning and exploration.

6. What are the biggest Security Risks in Mobile Applications?

Some of the common threats are insecure storage of data, poor encryption, unfiltered input from users, and the use of outdated frameworks. Another risk of using open sessions over Wi-Fi is that attackers can easily launch a man-in-the-middle attack or intercept data in transit. However, code tampering or repackaging is another significant threat, especially if the app does not have obfuscation.

With the help of a mobile application security audit, such issues are identified and resolved as soon as possible by the teams.

7. What are the Mobile Application Security Requirements?

Some of the core requirements that are usually included in mobile application security include strong cryptography, few permissions, secure sessions, and input validation. They also require external communications to be encrypted with the latest TLS protocols.

Many frameworks, such as OWASP or NIST, provide guidelines on how to store a credential or manage a push notification. These guidelines are compiled into a mobile application security audit checklist to ensure that all the aspects are followed and that users are safe.