Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing Services for a Financial Entity

Mobile Applications have become an all-easy and inevitable factor for businesses to connect their prospect services to the end-users. More and more organizations keep adopting a mobile-first approach, where there is both flexibility for users and improved ROI for the business. However, there is a broad concern about the security of these applications, especially when it handles a large amount of user data.

So, how to address these known and unknown vulnerabilities lurking around your application background? VAPT- Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing is a Mobile Application Security Testing service that detects exploitable vulnerabilities in your code, application, and APIs. The service extends much beyond the specified to test app functionalities.

The underlying case study points to a Mobile Application VAPT engagement conducted by ValueMentor for a financial company. Let us see how the team got under the skin of their mobile applications to uncover weaknesses and determine the appropriateness of the deployed controls.

About the Client

The client is a Payment Fintech Company having strategic alliances worldwide. One of their core values revolves around maintaining the highest security standards to protect their customer data. Hence, they need to confirm and ensure that their mobile applications don’t have a loophole existing in the hereafter.

Activities Performed

The engagement process involved conducting: –

• Mobile Application VAPT

Entangled Challenges

• To bypass the application’s built-in protection and perform dynamic analysis.
• Perform the evaluation of security risks for the business-critical mobile application and network services.
• Provide detailed recommendations on the improvement of application’s security level.
• To help the client achieve compliance standards within a limited timeframe.

Used Strategy

• Reverse-engineered the application and bypassed the protection with the help of runtime instrumentation tools.
• Segregation of the project ensured complete test coverage and prompt report delivery.
• Analysed the vulnerabilities in detail and identified prioritized solutions meeting customer requirements.
• Established a direct communication channel with the SPOC from the client side. The strategy helped the team inform the critical/high issues once they got identified to speed up the remediation process.

Uncovered Vulnerabilities

Here is the high-impact vulnerability list unveiled by the team in the mobile VAPT process performed: –

• SQL Injection
• Authentication Bypass
• Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Data Insecure Direct Object Reference
• Login Brute Force Attack

Conclusion

The client was able to successfully patch the identified vulnerabilities at the end of the Mobile VAPT process. The revalidation phase confirmed that there were no open weaknesses, and the identified vulnerabilities got patched to appropriate levels. The Mobile App Security Assessment proved beneficial for the client and the team, as well. At the end of the engagement, the results achieved were: –

• Improved secure coding practices
• Reduced safety risk to mobile application data
• Validated effectiveness of the security controls
• Achieved the required level of compliance with standards
• Enhanced reputation and confidence in terms of security

Final Thoughts

VAPT services help assure the required confidence level for organizations in the security boundary of their mobile applications. Besides identification of known and unknown vulnerabilities, the combined process help understand the minute weaknesses that can lead to a probable cyber-attack. Validating application security controls is a way to enhance application resilience for the near future. And moreover, performing the activity is the best step toward approaching industry regulations on your business course.