Enhancing Mobile SDK Security in the Age of Increasing Threats

This article is published in collaboration with the National DevOps Conference & Awards taking place in London on the 22nd and 23rd of October. Find more details here: National DevOps Conference & Awards 2024

Author: Chris Roeckl, Chief Product Officer at Appdome

The mobile app economy relies on transaction systems to ensure safe and valid transactions. As mobile becomes the de-facto way that consumers interact with the brands they use in their daily lives and work, regulatory scrutiny is increasing to ensure the payment or in-app purchase transaction is compliant with guidelines, stopping fraudulent or otherwise risky transactions. 

Software development kits, or SDKs, are at the heart of these transactions, and embedded into the apps we use every day. With the popularity of mobile exploding, mobile is becoming (sadly) the de facto platform of choice for bad actors to increasingly try to compromise these critical technology components.

Because of this, mobile SDKs face numerous security challenges. 

One significant issue is reverse engineering, where attackers decompile the SDK to uncover its code and logic, potentially stealing intellectual property. To combat this, obfuscation is used, with increasingly the best practice being to encrypt strings and preferences within the SDK, without affecting useability and performance.

Another prevalent problem is the risk of data interception. Sensitive data stored within the app or transmitted to servers can be intercepted by malicious actors. It’s more important than ever that SDKs mitigate this risk by encrypting data both at rest and in transit, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected from unauthorised access. 

Standards groups and transaction processors, like Visa and EMVco, have now mandated that mobile devices that have been rooted or jailbroken pose transaction risks, and therefore any such compromised device is not allowed to process a transaction. Why, jailbroken or rooted devices can bypass standard security mechanisms, making it easier for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities?  

There are more, but I think you get the idea of the threats. The other confounding variable is how to stop non-compliant transactions in real-time.

Securing Mobile SDKs: Real-Time Threat Detection and Compliance for a Safer Mobile App Economy

To stop non-compliant transactions in real-time requires real-time monitoring and reporting of security events and threats as they occur within the SDK during the flow of the transaction itself. With this developers and security teams have immediate visibility into security incidents, enabling real-time validation or denial of transactions as required by transactions processors and regulatory bodies.   

This approach destroys the old-world model of traditional fraud and security systems that cannot detect threats in real-time, meaning non-compliance due to delays in identifying and responding to security incidents. With this data in hand, mobile SDK makers can easily meet compliance objectives. More importantly, mobile SDK makers can create, customise, and use simple or complex threat streams to consume fraud, attack, threat, and risk data in the mobile SDK in real-time. The result is better decision-making and fraud prevention, without compromising service quality or the consumer’s mobile app experience.

Real-time systems also can go beyond the minimum requirement and look for additional signals of activity that may be indicative of fraud behaviour or what may lead to a non-compliant transaction. Some solutions, for example, can look for hundreds of attacks during the follow, providing incredibly valuable insights for SDK markets at banks, fintechs, and other transaction-minded firms.

However financial transactions are not the only segment that can benefit from SDK protection and real-time data about threats and attacks. Think authentication and identity verification, advertising, analytics, push services, and more.

All this sounds like a lot of work for developers – build the protections to obfuscate and encrypt the IP, build real-time protections for jailbreak/root and potentially dozens of others and keep those protections up to date along the way, and build and event reporting with listeners in the SDK and the back-end infrastructure. Yup, for sure, it’s a ton of work.

Thankfully automated systems have emerged to translate all this work down to the click of a button for dev and cyber engineering teams, be it an SDK or a mobile app. Such systems can keep your SDKs secure, and compliant, and provide real-time data for ensuring a valid transaction, to prevent ad SDK fraud, facial identity bypass, and many, many other use cases as well. 

As mobile continues to dominate as the primary platform for consumer interactions, ensuring the security and compliance of embedded SDKs has never been more critical. The increasing threat landscape, combined with stringent regulatory requirements, necessitates robust security measures that can detect and prevent fraudulent activities in real-time. Automated solutions now offer comprehensive protections, from obfuscation and encryption to real-time threat monitoring, addressing the myriad of security challenges faced by mobile SDKs.

By leveraging advanced automated systems, developers and security teams can significantly reduce the complexity and effort required to implement these protections. This enables them to focus on delivering high-quality, secure, and compliant applications, ensuring a safe and seamless experience for users. As the mobile app economy evolves, staying ahead of threats and regulatory demands will be paramount, and embracing innovative security solutions will be key to safeguarding the integrity and success of mobile applications in this dynamic landscape.

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