Book Image

Mobile Application Penetration Testing

By : Vijay Kumar Velu
Book Image

Mobile Application Penetration Testing

By: Vijay Kumar Velu

Overview of this book

Mobile security has come a long way over the last few years. It has transitioned from "should it be done?" to "it must be done!"Alongside the growing number of devises and applications, there is also a growth in the volume of Personally identifiable information (PII), Financial Data, and much more. This data needs to be secured. This is why Pen-testing is so important to modern application developers. You need to know how to secure user data, and find vulnerabilities and loopholes in your application that might lead to security breaches. This book gives you the necessary skills to security test your mobile applications as a beginner, developer, or security practitioner. You'll start by discovering the internal components of an Android and an iOS application. Moving ahead, you'll understand the inter-process working of these applications. Then you'll set up a test environment for this application using various tools to identify the loopholes and vulnerabilities in the structure of the applications. Finally, after collecting all information about these security loop holes, we'll start securing our applications from these threats.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Mobile Application Penetration Testing
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Apple's iOS security model


Before we jump to iOS apps in detail, it is vital to understand the fundamental security features of the iOS platform, which are crucial during app assessment.

The following diagram shows the security architecture of an iOS device and also provides an overview of security features implemented from the hardware level to software stack:

Roughly, we can split the iOS security model into these layers:

  • Device-level security

  • System-level security

  • Data-level security

  • Network-level Security

  • Application-level security

  • Hardware-level security

Device-level security

At the device level, the security model ensures that unauthorized personnel cannot use a user's device. It enforces a device-level lock such as a PIN or passcode, remote wipe using mobile device management (MDM), and options such as activation lock and finding your phone. Strategically, Apple allows the signing of configuration profiles, thereby allowing companies to centrally distribute all configurations to the device...