Mobile Application Security

This report analyses the topic of Mobile Application Security using 2 articles. The report discusses the research problems, relevance of literature review, methodology used, and concludes with an appropriate conclusion.

Running head: MOBILE APPLICATION SECURITY
MOBILE APPLICATION SECURITY
Name of student:
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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Discussion......................................................................................................................2
Article 1......................................................................................................................2
Article 2......................................................................................................................5
Conclusion......................................................................................................................7
Reference........................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
This report aims to analyse the topic “Mobile Application Security” using 2 articles.
The analysis of the research problems are provided in this report. The analysis of the
relevance of the literature review that is provided in this report. The methodology that is used
in the articles for the research are critically analysed in this report. Lastly, this report
concludes with an appropriate conclusion for this report.
The trend of the utilisation of smartphones and mobile devices are increasing in the
modern times. The reason behind the growth of this trend is because the facilities that are
offered by the smartphones are similar to the facilities of desktops. The aspect of security is
still a growing challenge in the modern times. Hence, the requirements of security and the
issues that are associated with the mobile applications are commonly researched and studied.
Discussion
Article 1
The trend of utilising the smartphones and the mobile devices has been on the rise in
the last decade. The market of these technologies has been rising significantly in the last
decade. These technologies are very much prone to the malicious attacks and threats. Every
platform of mobile developed and implemented the approaches and models for enforcing the
security of applications. Commonly, security is referred as the ability of a software of
preventing and tackling the unwanted access in a system. Moreover, the requirement of
security is one of the major concern for the researchers for focussing on among the platforms
of mobile. Similarly, the developers are highly concerned for the security constraints in the
time of any processes in the several models of mobile applications and the methodologies.

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The development of mobile application in the various platforms is conducted on the
basis of the requirements that are functional and non-functional. Presently, several kinds of
platforms exists for the deployment of the mobile applications within various private policies.
Hence, the research emphases on most invaluable and common applications of mobile.
Controlling of the applications that are third party associated is a difficult task in every store
of mobile apps, which impacts majorly on the increasing security issues in the platforms of
mobile. Meanwhile, on the basis of some research and surveys, several participants believed
that the risks of security are the major cause of the security on the mobile platforms. The
research question that was answered here was the reasons for the security concerns in the
mobile applications and why it is required to secure the mobile platforms. The problem is
clearly stated which is the security concerns of the mobile applications and the research
problem is of significance.
Moreover, the expansion and growing of the applications of mobile and the platforms,
the concerns of security are growing in every aspect of the common world. Physical security,
information security, system security, and network security are the fundamental security
aspects in mobile computing. The accessibility of the mobile applications makes it an
essential feature in the computing technologies. Presently, the enterprises with mobile
platforms are needing restricted mechanisms of security from the companies of IT and the
infrastructures of technology with the implementation of the several innovative levels of the
security for the protection of the data of the user. Meanwhile, the technologies that presently
exist for security can be implemented within the architecture of mobile platforms like
firewalls, biometrics, cryptography, and virtual private network. The main risks that have
created the mobile platforms the most favourable targets for the threats and the attacks from
any unknown publishers. In the meantime, the applications that are web-based are supported
by several kinds of mobile browsers. The applications of mobile web browser are currently

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facing the similar security threats like the technology of web view browsers such as
computers in the terms of the vulnerabilities. The differences among the mobile platforms
such as the architectures of security are majorly based on the similar model, which is the
access control that is permission based, code signing, and the isolation of application are the
three major techniques of security that is built within the various platforms. It can be
observed that in the previous times, the companies of mobile platforms had the tendency of
focusing on the features of development than any kind of other essential concepts like
security. Due to this reason, the weakness of the platform, binary and storage were severely
misused, while the data storage includes key stores, system of application file, and the
database for the applications, configuration and caches files. Moreover, this research focuses
on the mobile security and the effectiveness of the malicious application on several mobile
platforms. In the same time, the major target of the attackers were the applications of banking
and it is most preferred by the attackers as the malicious people can gain huge amount of
money easily. Moreover, the challenge is the attack for breaching the restrictive licensing of
the applications and the functionality and the restrictive platforms. As it can be observed that
the research covers the relevant existing research literature for the research question and the
methodology that is used is the survey of the companies and the common tendencies of the
users who are currently using the mobile applications. It can be observed that there is a good
agreement between the research question and the philosophical framework that is used and
the methods that were utilised for the research. There is no flaw in the logic that is utilised for
the research. The study can be considered ethical as there was no violation of the privacy of
the common people and the ethical standards were constantly maintained and no ethical
measures were breached in the study. The data collection method was the sampling and the
survey reports and the analysis of the research is appropriate as this research can be useful for
the understanding of the current security threats in the mobile applications and the implement

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suitable security measures for securing the mobile applications. The finding of the research is
that the security threats on the mobile applications is rising in the modern times and the
evidence that is obtained from the research is effectively supporting the research (Zhang et al.
2014).
Article 2
The fluidity of the markets of the application complicate the security of the
smartphones. Even though several current struggles have highlighted on specific specific
issues of security and still there is a slight opportunity in broader characteristics of security of
the applications of smartphones. This aim of this article is to understand the security of the
mobile applications with the sampling and studying of more than 1100 popular free android
applications. The security of the mobile applications is tested in this research with the
implementation of ded compiler and this recovers the source code of the android application
straight from the image of installation. The designing and the execution of the straight study
of the applications of smartphone based on the still investigation of 21 million lines of the
recuperated code. The analysis that is conducted in this research revealed persistent
utilisation or the mishandling of the phone or personal identifiers and the profound
infiltration of the advertising and the analytics of the networks.
The swift development of the smartphones has directed towards a resurgence for the
mobile devices. The applications of the mobile upkeep a wide area of financial, social and the
services of enterprise for a user having cellular data plan. The android market provide a
technology of click and point access to several applications that are free and paid. The
markets rationalise installation, software marketing, and the update and therefore the creation
of low barriers for introducing applications in the market and eventually downgrade the
barriers that are implemented for the users for obtaining and utilising the applications. The
market fluidity also represents the huge challenges of security. The swiftly advanced and

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implemented applications, rough authorisation systems, behaviours of privacy invading,
malware and the restricted models of security that have directed to the consumable
applications and phones. Even though the users desire the applications, the markets do not
have the capability of providing security in excessive way than any superficial methods. The
lack that persists in the general description for the volume and the security of the applications
guarantees that any questionable, malicious, or any kind of applications that are vulnerable
will eventually make their path to the markets.
This article roughly characterised the security of the applications in the market of
android. After the analysis of previous studies with narrower focus, it is considered a breadth
of the concerns that includes both the vulnerabilities and the dangerous functionality and a
wide range of analysis techniques are applied. Android is referred as the OS that is designed
for smartphones. It can be observed from past studies that the android offers an environment
of sandboxed application execution. A Linux system that is customised embedded interacts
with an off-processor cellular radio and phone hardware. The applications cooperate with one
another and the phone with several IPC forms. The study of android application in this article
consists of a wide variety of tests that are concentrated on three types of analysis, which are
discovery of the issues that are uncovered in the earlier studies and the malware advisories,
the search for the common coding security failures and exploration of the failures in
misuse/security in the utilisation of android structure.
The analysis of the specifications are conducted with the four approaches for the
evaluation of recuperated source code, which are analysis of control flow, analysis of data
flow, the semantic analysis and structural analysis. The analysis in this article provides the
functionality and the vulnerabilities. The challenge in this article is the selection of the
properties for the study.

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The misuse of phone identifiers: in this article, previous studies are analysed for the
identifying the phone identifiers that are leaking to the remote network servers. The aim of
this article is to understand the causes the existing data leaks.
Exposure of the physical location: the analysis of the previous studies aims to identify the
exposure to the location of the advertisement servers. Several applications provides utility
that are location aware, that may be required by the user. By the manual inspection of the
code, the article aims to identify the application portion that are responsible for the exposure.
Threat of eavesdropping: the video and audio eavesdropping is a common discussed
smartphone threat. The cases and examined in the report where the applications record the
audio or video without the control flows to the UI code (Chen et al. 2014).
In this article, the research question is or the research problem is clearly stated and the
analysis is conducted based on the studies. It can be observed after the analysis of the article
that the research adequately covers the research problem and the existing research literature.
The methodology that is utilised in this article is the survey of the user behaviour who are
using the smartphones. The study is considered as ethical as the research conducts the
research by maintaining all the ethical guidelines and the privacy of the users are not
breached in this research. The research finding is supported by the evidence that is collected
after the analysis of the survey reports.
Conclusion
Hence, it can be concluded that the aspect of mobile application security is a growing
concern among the users of smartphones in the present times. The trend of the utilisation of
smartphones and mobile devices are increasing in the modern times. The reason behind the
growth of this trend is because the facilities that are offered by the smartphones are similar to
the facilities of desktops. The trend of utilising the smartphones and the mobile devices has

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been on the rise in the last decade. The market of these technologies has been rising
significantly in the last decade. These technologies are very much prone to the malicious
attacks and threats. The development of mobile application in the various platforms is
conducted on the basis of the requirements that are functional and non-functional. Presently,
several kinds of platforms exists for the deployment of the mobile applications within various
private policies. Moreover, the expansion and growing of the applications of mobile and the
platforms, the concerns of security are growing in every aspect of the common world.
Physical security, information security, system security, and network security are the
fundamental security aspects in mobile computing. The fluidity of the markets of the
application complicate the security of the smartphones. Even though several current
determinations have highlighted on particular issues of security and still there is a slight
opportunity in broader characteristics of security of the applications of smartphones. The
swift development of the smartphones has directed towards a resurgence for the mobile
devices. The applications of the mobile support a wide area of financial, social and the
services of enterprise for a user having cellular data plan.

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Reference
Zhang, F., Huang, H., Zhu, S., Wu, D., & Liu, P. (2014, July). ViewDroid: Towards
obfuscation-resilient mobile application repackaging detection. In Proceedings of the 2014
ACM conference on Security and privacy in wireless & mobile networks (pp. 25-36). ACM.
Chen, E. Y., Pei, Y., Chen, S., Tian, Y., Kotcher, R., & Tague, P. (2014, November). Oauth
demystified for mobile application developers. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC
conference on computer and communications security (pp. 892-903). ACM.

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