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      What is Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST)?

      Learn why mobile application security testing needs to be a focus at the beginning, and throughout, the app development lifecycle.

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      Why mobile application security testing

      Mobile applications are a critical part of our everyday lives, and their relevance to the way we live is only growing. In fact, mobile app revenue is predicted to reach $935 billion by 2023.

      As people and businesses alike depend on mobile apps for convenience and financial success, the way they store and process information is becoming even more sophisticated.

      Despite these growing complexities, too many developers consider security needs at the end of the software development lifecycle. To identify the weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and threats that impact an app, MAST (mobile app security testing) needs to be a priority from the start of the development journey.

      Ways to test mobile application security

      Penetration testing
      Automated Mobile Application Security Testing
      Other alternatives

      Penetration testing

      Penetration testing, or pen testing, is the most common security starting point for mobile app development teams. It’s a valuable way to get an initial outside assessment of your application when you don’t have the time, tools, or security knowledge in-house to assess the security posture of an application. Pen testing is a great compliment to an overall security testing strategy and is often a requirement for compliance purposes.

      Automated Mobile Application Security Testing

      Automated mobile application security testing is about taking on the responsibilities of security testing, in-house, with the support of automated tools to make it cost-effective and manageable enough to get frequent feedback on the security assessment of an app. Automated tools can also be integrated into the software development life cycle (SDLC) as part of a continuous integration or continuous delivery (CI/CD) process.

      Other alternatives

      Other alternatives to mobile application security testing include Bug Bounties and crowd-sourced app security testing. Relying on these third-party programs to find vulnerabilities should supplement internal security practices, such as threat modeling, code reviews, and automated security testing.

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      Techniques for MAST

      Mobile application security testing is a process that can serve many goals. But in the end, it’s always about hardening the application code and mitigating risks. Two techniques for testing an application are static analysis and dynamic analysis.

      • Static Analysis

        is a testing approach that looks at a code-based representation of an application, either through direct inspection of the source code or through decompiling the application and its resources for inspection.

      • Dynamic Analysis

        is an approach for analyzing an application at run-time. This can be especially useful for identifying behavioral differences for different target platforms/runtimes while evaluating runtime behaviors or protections interactively.

      Types of tools for automated Mobile Application Security Testing

      General-Purpose Tools
      Open source testing tools
      Mobile-specific tools
      Integrating MAST

      General-purpose application security testing tools

      General-purpose app testing tools may actually already be in place in your organization. They are often well integrated into the organization’s security process.

      However, they are often expensive, not the most developer-friendly, they can be slow, and for mobile apps, they often lack the depth of analysis and tailored findings that are specific to mobile application threats. Mobile developers should evaluate their application security testing tool to ensure it has a strong focus on mobile application threats, including consideration of the OWASP Mobile Top 10 and the OWASP mobile security testing guide.

      Read more on the OWASP Mobile Top 10

      Open source testing tools

      Open source tools can be a good way to initially get coverage in security testing, but often, these tools are not maintained and kept current as the security landscape changes. These tools should be evaluated based on how well they are maintained by a community, as with any open source project.

      Additionally, these tools should be evaluated based on how easy it is to consume the output or findings of the tool. High rates of false positives or difficult to read reports can make integrating such a tool more frustrating than beneficial.

      Mobile-specific application security testing tools

      Mobile apps have unique risks, in particular the concept of a MATE (man-at-the-end) attack vector, which means an attacker can load the application on their local device which gives them access to specialized tools, time, and resources to inspect and reverse engineer the application. Additionally, mobile apps need to make use of unique mobile platform features and security controls, as well as ensure secure communications and storage of data.

      These threats to mobile apps are often not covered by generic application security testing tools. Selecting a security testing tool that is specialized in mobile apps and built for mobile app developers can be critical in providing relevant, actionable findings.

      Top 5 threats to mobile apps

      Integrating MAST into the SDLC and DevOps workflow

      To truly improve the security controls around building mobile apps, organizations must ensure that automated security testing tools fit into their developers’ existing workflows. Tools in use should be fast, provide actionable results or recommendations, and integrate directly into the SDLC.

      The key criteria here is making sure there is a way to automate the analysis. As you execute automated security testing within your DevOps workflow, you’ll want to make sure you can compare the results build-over-build to pinpoint which commits and releases of your app introduced new vulnerabilities or findings.

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