At Surf, we work with clients from different sectors, so we understand the importance of going deeper into the particularity and needs of every field to bring out an effective and reliable mobile application. Our expertise shows that building a fintech application with a seamless UI/UX design and a wide range of features is insufficient. This is common when the app’s security should be prioritized.
Why? With many customers accessing their banks using their devices, the number of security issues that arise is usually high. Mobile banking apps are more vulnerable to data theft and breaches because they operate in an environment where users store and manage highly sensitive data.
Mobile operating systems are also prone to viruses, bugs, and malware. These security issues create room for cybercriminals to steal data. We will look at the primary factors that can put your app’s security at risk and share our experience on how you can keep your banking app free from whatever form of fraud.
Why Is Security an Essential Part of a Mobile Banking App?
To understand how to secure mobile banking apps, you should first figure out the difference between an m-banking app and others that don’t require you to link with a bank account.
A mobile banking application is a type of software linked to the backend system of a bank through an open-source API (Application Programming Interfaces). The use of an open-source API speeds up the development process. However, this signifies lots of security risks that you cannot eliminate with a standard set of security practices.
There are three ‘layers of protection’ or levels in mobile banking app security. This is where risks may come from:
- Device: Cyberattackers can access vital information on a mobile device, which is quite common in poorly coded applications. Personal information and card data can easily be stolen to be used for blackmailing or siphoning accounts.
- Transit: At this level, intruders can block vital information during the transfer of data. A mobile banking application will constantly contact the server to update the current balance or make a payment. Users’ private information may end up being an easy target for mischievous actors if there is an unsecured protocol used for data transfer.
- Server: In such an instance, bugs can result in unapproved users gaining access to data on the app server. They can do this through backend APIs that have security vulnerabilities.
When you look at the ultimate mobile banking trends, you will notice that most booming features deal with advanced security technologies despite talking about cutting-edge features like voice recognition, AI-based chatbots, and cardless ATMs. The other reason why security issues should be prioritized even before beginning development is that small breaches of user data paint a bad picture of the reputation of a specific company.
Common Types of Fintech Cyberattacks
Attackers usually capitalize on the security flaws of a banking app in multiple ways, despite some intrusions happening more often. You should pay attention to the following five kinds of attacks when developing a mobile banking application:
- MiTM (Man-in-the-middle) attacks. Malicious actors try to block critical information during its transfer between a bank and an application to steal data and later use it to hack a user’s account.
- Infrastructure breaches. These are attacks usually targeted at servers. Their main goal is to steal vital information or credentials like passwords, usernames, and other personal information.
- Pirate apps. In this scenario, hackers reverse engineer or decompile a mobile banking application to later distribute their ‘infected’ version and access user data installed in a pirated version.
- Mobile malware. There are lots of mobile malware targeting smartphones, although they are quite common in desktop systems.
- Clickjacking. A methodology that encourages users to click on a specific element or button triggers a malicious response, e.g., collecting confidential data or downloading malware.
You should understand that these attacks don’t usually happen because of mobile development loopholes. At times, it could be a result of unsafe behavior of mobile users or system issues.
Key Risk Factors & Strategies to Resolve
To build the most secure banking application, you should first point out the essential focus areas during the preparation phase before development. You should familiarize yourself with some of the major mobile security flaws listed in the OWASP report on mobile vulnerabilities.
Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) comprises several developers who create software security guidelines and promote the best coding practices for software engineers across the globe.
Their top 10 list points out the kinds of security risks mobile apps face worldwide. Reading or familiarizing yourself with this list is essential for developers specializing in fintech applications. According to estimations, nearly 85% of mobile applications worldwide were exposed to at least one threat listed on OWASP Top 10.
Let’s look at them in detail:
Lack of Proper Platform Usage
Mistakes during the development phase are a leading cause of mobile banking app security issues. The main risk comes about due to misuse of features in an operating system or failure to use unique features in Android or iOS (for example, permissions systems or TouchID). Failure to comply with the security requirements will result in the exposure and corruption of your app’s data.
- Avoiding strategy: Take your time to evaluate the documentation of iOS and Android to understand the security practices that should be applied to the server-side operations and mobile interface in each scenario and stick to them.
Insecure Data Storage
This is another popular problem that you can easily prevent during the development phase. Most software is available for free to grant malicious actors access to third-party app directories and stored personal data. If you lack enough protection for your internal storage, your confidential data can be distorted and used for illegal activities.
- Avoiding strategies: You should use purposefully vulnerable mobile applications for iOS like iGoat to test threats on development frameworks or an app. Therefore, developers can establish how particular APIs handle app processes and information assets, including data storage.
- For Android application: Developers normally use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) shell to check the database management system, file permissions, and database encryption.
Insecure Communication
This is another major risk to mobile banking app security. The functionality of mobile banking applications depends on their communication with outside data sources like Bluetooth devices, servers, and NFC. Failure to ensure the security of this communication puts the whole app at risk and may result in man-in-the-middle attacks and data leaks.
- Avoiding strategy: Strong encryption algorithms, quality authentication, and encrypting all communications using SSL (secure sockets layer) protocol.
Insecure Authentication
This happens when a mobile phone fails to correctly recognize a user and grants a malicious actor access to the app with default credentials. User passwords, ID, PINs, and fingerprint scanning can be combined in one application to ensure no authentication bypassing.
Avoiding strategy. There are two tips to follow:
- Add the server-side authentication option because the local one is more vulnerable.
- Make sure the app does not allow storing user passwords on the device. You should also warn users of the risks linked to selecting the ‘Remember me’ option.
Insufficient Cryptography
Those who develop the most secure banking applications give top priority to cryptography in security technology. Encrypted data has no meaning to intruders because it cannot easily be read. Bypassing the encryption also requires a lot of processing power and time for attackers to be successful.
- Avoiding strategy. You should only use thoroughly tested algorithms that have proved their resilience because weak encryption can lead to user data leakage.
Insecure Authorization
- Authentication and authorization are two different things. Authentication is a procedure used in identifying logged-in individuals, while authorization the parts of an app is accessible to a specific user, based on their role (e.g., end-user or administrator. The perfectly structured authorization grants you the chance to ensure that every user will get the data you are permitted to.
- Avoiding strategy. You can prevent one of the biggest mobile banking app security issues, insecure authorization, by avoiding depending on permissions and roles applied on the mobile device. You should not forget that each role within the application should only be formed on server data.
Poor Code Quality
This is a very common situation when all developers within a specific team carry out different development practices, resulting in inconsistencies in the final code. Such a problem may make a banking app more vulnerable because its maintenance becomes complex and linked to security breaches and bugs.
- Avoiding strategy. Set up common practices for all developers in your team and document everything to ensure newcomers adapt easily.
Code Tampering
- Mobile code is generally prone to tampering. This means attackers can easily change parts of the binary code of a specific application, create copies and distribute the tampered or malicious versions through third-party app stores. There are many tampered apps, and companies are doing their best to get rid of duplicated apps from app stores and inform users of data breaches in such instances.
- Avoiding strategy. You should include a runtime detection option during the development stage for the app to detect changes or additions, depending on what it understands about integrity during compilation. You should also set up automatic deletion of app code and data after detecting a tampering attempt. This is essential in ensuring maximum mobile banking app security.
Reverse Engineering
This is always the beginning or initial phase of a malicious cyberattack. Intruders will access the app’s source code from a collected file and use it to decipher the app’s business logic.
Avoiding strategy. You can do three things to avoid attempts of reverse engineering:
- Use reverse engineering tools like those used by attackers. If they effectively analyze the app’s confidential data, your existing code is most likely compromised.
- Code obfuscation. This makes it hard to spot logical links between different parts of the code.
- Use C and C++ languages. They can help make the app irrepressible to reverse engineering tools.
Extraneous Functionality
After developing an application, developers usually keep the code, which has no meaningful use for end-users but acts as a plan B to have smooth access to the backend server, creating logs to evaluate errors. These concealed functionalities can expose users’ critical data at risk despite simplifying the development work.
- Avoiding strategy. Carefully test your application to ensure that all unwanted code has been eliminated from the final version.
In Summary
Developing a mobile banking application is associated with a wide range of security risks. Here is a summary of some of the main ones we have discussed on mobile banking app security:
- The mobile build is vulnerable to breaches and cyberattacks because it involves the use of open-source APIs. Such a configuration needs security measures that are beyond the regular set;
- The security of mobile banking applications has a triple layer of protection or levels. Risks can come from the device, transit, and server;
- Fintech apps are exposed to thousands of different kinds of attacks. The most common types for mobile banking applications include infrastructure breaches, man-in-the-middle attacks, mobile malware, pirate apps, and clickjacking;
- Nearly 85% of mobile banking applications across the globe encountered at least one of OWASP’s Top 10 security risks;
- Specific additions and adjustments to the development process and serious testing can help you avoid each of the 10 OWASP security risks.
Surf has top-level expertise when it comes to the development applications using cross-platform technologies. Security is pivotal to this kind of app, so they take their time to ensure they follow the best practices for mobile banking app security and ensure end-user critical data is well protected.
The latest fintech projects for Surf include developing Rosbank’s smart-bank application for corporate clients and Twim, a cryptocurrency trading platform. The Surf team built the Rosbank application on Flutter, ensuring the smooth migration from a seamless UI/UX design and an old app.
Flutter is the latest cross-platform framework that is widely used for mobile app development. It uses the Dart language and solves the problem of responding to incoming data that is asynchronous. The hot reload feature is supported by Flutter, while mobile apps can be easily restarted, speeding up the entire development process. Recently, the official flutter backers are Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ Idea, and Android studio.
For Twim, the primary goal was to create a fast app that is super stable for enthusiasts and power traders, which was a success on Surf’s side.