Mobile Application Security: Malware Threats and Defenses

This scholarly essay discusses the vulnerabilities and threats to mobile application security, and evaluates the findings of the journal article 'Mobile Application Security: Malware Threats and Defenses'. It also provides preventive measures and existing tools to counter these vulnerabilities.

MOBILE APPLICATION SECURITY SCHOLARLY ESSAY
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29th May 2018

Mobile application Security scholarly essay 2
MOBILE APPLICATION SECURITY SCHOLARLY ESSAY
Introduction
Technology innovation and advancements have contributed immensely to the functionality
quantum leap which is a consequence of a tremendous upgrade, from the traditional mobile
phones to the current smartphones.tThe traditional mobile phones had limited functionalities and
applications for work and entertainment compared to the smartphones where now, users have the
option of acquiring suitable applications from a variety online (Lin et al ,2014),. Thanks to
globalization, the penetration of smartphones has been on the rise since 2014 where at the time
according to Statistica (2014), it was estimated that 1.75 billion people had access to one or more
smartphones, today the number has grown exponentially to 2.53 billion This number is expected
to constantly rise over the years mainly due to the increase in the number of smartphone brands
offering quality devices at low and affordable prices and the development of emerging economies.
This has also led to increasing and revolutions of business where these devices are used to access
products and services from firms and organizations (Poushter, 2016).
The distinct features of the smartphone as mentioned earlier is the ability to install a third-party
application from online sources known as app markets such app stores for android platform and
Apple store for IOS platforms. These platforms have given development a channel of making and
publishing their own app either for a significant fee or subscription which have widened
functionality and use of the smartphones and enriched user experience.
However, there is a present threat that could sabotage the success of the smartphone through
mobile apps which have been the core of their success. This increase penetrations and system
support for smartphone applications present opportunities for a hacker to spread malware to
smartphones launching various attacks. This paper will look further into this issue by critically

Mobile application Security scholarly essay 3
reflecting on a journal article “mobile application security: malware threats and defenses”,
analyze and critically evaluate its findings.
“mobile application security: malware threats and defenses”,
Like other digital frameworks, cell phones are additionally defenseless against malware, which
are noxious projects intended to keep running on tainted frameworks without their proprietors'
mindfulness. While clients are enthusiastic about downloading applications from application
showcases, this gives programmers a helpful method to taint cell phones with malware. The
article demonstrates the various ways that hackers use mobile apps to infect smartphone with
malware. One of the ways is repacking of the malware into popular games which mostly are free
and when a user’s downloads and installs an infected game, the smartphone becomes vulnerable
to the hackers affect it is launched ( Chan and Guizani ,2015). The other ways are the use do
disguise macro files, the use of available bugs present from erroneous decoding from developers
and maximizing the use of variableness in networks and websites.
The journal article has clearly stated the research question ‘why smartphones are vulnerable?’
which has used it as the basis of its findings. The journal argues that the penetration of the
smartphones globally has led to increased dependence on business through the uses of mobile
apps to remain successful and relevant, this gives hackers a financial motivation in exploiting
vulnerabilities. Moreover, this is further pushed by the open source kernels strategy which
according to Google will allow app developers to develop and publish their apps easily for the
purpose of gaining business market share, however, this allows hackers to get a deeper
understanding of the system functionalities, therefore, finding exploits to use for their gain. The
malware is categorized by their functionalities which means what they are intended to do. Some
are used for surveillance where hackers spy on their victims without their knowledge, others

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malware are used in harvesting data of their victims such as personal information like bank
accounts logons.
The article uses a ‘defense methodology’ which is core purpose is to illustrate the various way of
preventing vulnerabilities. The article categorizes this into preventive measures and use of exiting
tools that will detect remove and prevent malware penetration. Preventive measures mainly
stipulate the cooperation between the stakeholders which is the smartphone users, application
developer and the app market distributors’ developer and app distributors should ensure quality
secure apps are developed and published respectively.
App developers should adhere to the guideline and policies put in place in developing secure
coding and privacy, app store administrators should be strict in analyzing and vetting app before
publishing them of their app markets. Smartphone users should incorporate personal preventive
frameworks such as a firewall that would alert them to suspicious activity. The article stipulates
the second category is the use of exiting tools that will be affecting in detecting malware and
removing them, these include programs such as anti-viruses that detect suspicion unauthorized
activities or any vulnerabilities that are in existence and provide critical solutions (Dini,et
al,2014).
However, despite the fact, there is the existence of prevention and detection tools or approaches to
curbing malware and threats hackers are finding new ways of locating vulnerabilities which
evolves the behavior of these there are, therefore it would be efficient for more sophisticated tools
to be developed to counter these changes and development (Annachhatre et al, 2015). There is the
minimal agreement between the research question and the philosophical frameworks as there is
not a considerable instance of its illustration in the journal article, however, there is a good
agreement with research question with the survey research method as it further explains the

Mobile application Security scholarly essay 5
essence and the impact application vulnerabilities have in general. Moreover, there were no biases
detected in the methods used in the study or flaws in the logic or methods that undermine the
results and conclusions of the research
Conclusion
This paper has critically discussed the research and finding in the journal article “mobile
application security: malware threats and defenses”. Its main theme was the threats to the
security of mobile applications. Through the research question “why smartphones are vulnerable”
the paper has discussed and evaluated its research and findings concerning the various insecurities
and threat that undermine the effort of the stakeholders who smartphone users are, app developers
and app market administrators proving that the study is ethical since it illustrates the
consequences related to these vulnerabilities. Moreover, various solutions to currently counter
these vulnerabilities have been reflected on in this paper. The penetrations of smartphones into
global markets is expected to increase over the years especially due to the development of
emerging economies (Beck, 2018). This will also have a simultaneous effect on the vulnerabilities
and threats to mobile applications securities they are also expected to rise. Therefore, it will be
effective for the stakeholders as mentioned in this paper to be part and parcel in the development
and incorporation of sophisticated tools to counter this threat.

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Reference
Annachhatre, C., Austin, T.H. and Stamp, M., 2015. Hidden Markov models for malware
classification. Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques, 11(2), pp.59-73.
Beck, U., 2018. What is globalization?. John Wiley & Sons.
Dini, G., Martinelli, F., Matteucci, I., Saracino, A. and Sgandurra, D., 2014. Introducing
probabilities in contract-based approaches for mobile application security. In Data Privacy
Management and Autonomous Spontaneous Security (pp. 284-299). Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg.
He, D., Chan, S. and Guizani, M., 2015. Mobile application security: malware threats and
defenses. IEEE Wireless Communications, 22(1), pp.138-144.
Lin, Y.D., Huang, C.Y., Wright, M. and Kambourakis, G., 2014. Mobile application security.
Computer, 47(6), pp.21-23.
Poushter, J., 2016. Smartphone ownership and internet usage continues to climb in emerging
economies. Pew Research Center, 22.
Statistica. 2014. 1.75 Billion in 2014. Mobile users pick up smartphones as they become more
affordable, 3G and 4G networks advance.