2.7 C
New York
Monday, March 25, 2024

Buy now

Everything You Should Know about Mobile Apps Security Against Reverse Engineering 

Today it is true that the security of mobile apps is very crucial.  Developers are paying more attention to the overall security of apps than ever. While developing or managing overall mobile applications, the developers are more focused about the securer ways. The point is since the options in apps are growing rapidly, so is the number of threats and risks in cyber world.

When talking about different threats, one threat that is really prominent and trending is Reverse engineering . it can have massive repercussions for both companies and organizations from compromises on intellectual property and their revenue loss. the point is there having to be proper inculcation of security features in the applications to ensure that they can manage these threats and guard against any invasions.

Basics about this threat 

Reverse kind of engineering is a clear process in which  the attackers obtain the original source code and similar types of resources that blend up into creation of an APK file from the binary.  Through manifold tools easily available in the market, DEX files might get decompiled to JAR files, and even also to Java source code. This is something that your competitors can use to see overall app’s functionalities threadbare. They can even copy some features surreptitiously.  Not to miss that both attackers  and hackers could use this method to access premium kind of features of your app by evading the authentication process. Also remember that game cheats may use it to accomplish an unfair advantage over people who are competing.

There is proper employment of debuggers to trace the overall flow of programs. Though this the whole business logic of the application can get simulated in another pseudo-app.  Now, it could be injected with malware and distributed. Inoffensive users or people downloading the app are hence get compromised and of course, there is leakage of their confidential , sensitive and private data.

Handling of Reverse type of Engineering?

Since app security fundamentally augments the confidence that generally consumers rest on your product, it is absolutely essential for developers to make use of the best practices to guard mobile apps against this dangerous reverse type of engineering. Have a look at some of these practice below:

  • If you store the code stuff on the server side that too with a great level of encryption techniques is even one of the ways in which you can check reverse type of engineering. You should keep in mind to use secure apes to manage the communication between application and even the server.
  • Preference of specific types of programming language matters much. There should be usage of C/C++ to code functionalities that are somewhat business critical. Mostly the time writing of android apps is done in Java, and it can conveniently be decompiled, if you compare it to C/C++. the point is using NDK to write crucial kinds of code natively into the .so files and compilation of them really makes the process of reverse engineering a lot more cumbersome.
  • It is always wise if you store business logic in an encrypted sort of form. When you do code obfuscation intelligently, it might really help in tackling with this reverse kind of engineering so that your code is just a part of scrambled code to any attacker or even hacker trying to crack your application logic.
  • It is always crucial that you create a robust hashing algorithm to storage confidential as well as sensitive information, like passwords. It is something that would make their decryption and further misuse intolerable.

Thoughtfully apply SSL

Once interacting between server and even the device, most of the developers employ SSL for better degree of security of their code. You should definitely know that there are numerous small methods that are limited in the class that implements a ssl socket factory interface. Such are the small techniques that do accept all sorts of certificates. As a result they make up the application vulnerable to middle attacks (MIT). It is a thing that could result in the loss of privacy of data transferred through the SSL/TSL protocol. You must understand that a hacker can suitably breach the connection and attain valuable data by simply offering a self-signed kind of certificate.

Avoid storing the values in raw format

make it a point that you never store the values in raw format.  Professionals suggest that for storing your values, you should never use raw format. Now, simply imagine that the value of user balance (in kind of currency) demands to be stored, these values are to get secured in encoded form (in a way, you might store them in the algorithm).  Hence, you can ensure utmost level of protection.

Conceal the API Keys 

Mostly , third-party providers use API key to simply grant access to the particular type of resources. Mostly it happens that they use it to earn a great amount of money from their data. It is suggested not to gather or store the API keys in shared assets, resource folders, preferences, or as a hardcode in Java. It is to make sure that that they can get easily unzipped and the API can become decompiled to get the key.  It would be nice if you use either NDK or even Private/public key exchange to guard your API key. When you are thoughtful about such things, you would be definite about the shield of your application.

Dodge external storage 

Documents or even files that get stored in external storage devices are somewhat readable by all applications. These can get conveniently changed whenever the user links up the overall USB storage device to your computer. In case the application gets deleted, the documents are still there in the domain of external storage. It might actually end up in losing of privacy of valued data. It is, thus , recommended to store all the files in either internal memory or even use the SQLite database.

Conclusion 

To sum up,  you have a fair idea about how to protect app from reverse engineering, you should not take a risk. After all, it is about the reputation of your organization!

Related Articles

Stay Connected

0FansLike
3,912FollowersFollow
0SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Articles