When you tell people that they have their bank account in the pocket and can carry out all sorts of transactions in a few clicks, you will get two kinds of responses- excitement and nervousness. Contrary as they may seem, both are actually valid responses. Excitement because it lends users the liberty to bank 24/7 with utmost convenience. Nervousness because if customers have a bank in their pocket 24/7, it means they are 24/7 vulnerable to security breaches. The problem for banking applications, however, isn’t the reluctance of some users but the fact that reservations hold solid ground.
After all, you would believe that applications that carry out such sensitive financial transactions must have air-tight security. Right? Well, not quite. In a recent study, the security assessment of 15 Android and 15 iOS apps, it was found that 40% of them used insecure communications. Even more glaring is the fact that 73% of the Android applications had vulnerabilities of medium severity and 80% of iOS apps had vulnerabilities of low severity.
Do you believe your application is better than them? Let’s take a look at the most common security loopholes that developers often miss and the ones you must not overlook. These can be broadly categorized into three aspects:
Permissions
This is the most common area where banking applications are found to be insecure, particularly Android apps. The most serious vulnerabilities include:
- Access to World-writable files
- Presence of Word-Executable
Code
The source code of applications are meant only for the app developers and any unauthorized access can seriously compromise the security of the app. The most common flaws in regard to the code are:
- Dynamic code loading
- Weak SecureRandom implementation
- No code obfuscation
Network
Securing application on the device isn’t enough. It also needs to be ensured that when they communicate with the server, the data sent and received is also secure. The network security flaws found on many of the applications include:
- Inappropriately set “HttpOnly” flag
- Lack of app transport security
- TLS traffic with sensitive data
- Inappropriately set “Secure” flag
Apart from fixing these loopholes, there are also other security measures that you must implement right from the scratch of your development procedure. Some of them include:
Scrutinize the attack surface
Attack surface is the culmination of all the components of an application that carry the highest risk of security attacks. This includes the sum of all the communication channels, all the sensitive data stored in the application, and the codes to protect both. As evident, it is a very elaborate and complex process that would demand the highest level of expertise from your mobile app developers but is equally, if not more, crucial as well.
Try thread modeling
If you implement thread modeling in early stages, you have clear idea of how different resources, assets, and communication channels of your application converge and consequently reveal the loopholes that hacks may later exploit. That is, you need to perform this task in tandem with modeling the attack surface because every time you find a flaw, you would need to shape the attack surface accordingly and once you do, you would again need to implement the thread modeling. After enough cycles of refinement, you may expect to get a highly secure model of your application.
Test all you can
Once you have your application ready, never rush it out to the market for it is bound to have security flaws no matter how careful you have been in earlier stages. The only thing you can do at this point is test, test, and some more test. From static testing of the code including various methods to interactive testing by experts and naive users, leave no stone unturned to find what you are looking for- security bugs.
As would be clear by now, building banking applications is a task that requires utmost expertise and dedication, and consequently isn’t cheap. However, app development companies in India have gained quite a reputation for delivering such products at highly competitive rates. If you are looking for such developers, you can begin your search from there.