Security Vulnerabilities in Android OS Applications

Abstract

During the past few years, commercial organizations and businesses are actively developing and using mobile applications to increase the efficiency of their business processes. As a result, employees, customers and suppliers get increased productivity in the work environment through real-time information exchange, mobility, and better functionality.

Despite the advantages of mobile apps, their usage can lead to potentially dangerous security issues. Like legacy enterprise solutions, mobile apps can contain vulnerabilities that can be attacked and lead to leaks of data.

Vulnerabilities and privacy risks that are present in Android apps that are installed on millions of devices can be used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s information resources or private user data. Most Android mobile apps initiate connections to the network, other apps, or third-party services, making a reckless user more vulnerable to malicious attacks. Therefore, security, mobile encryption, and thorough application vulnerability testing are required at the application development stage.

This work demonstrates some standard tools for performing static analysis of Android OS applications without running them on the user’s device. Social networks are currently the most important media place in the world and the most widely used channel for data, video, and audio transmission. Therefore, the above-mentioned static analysis methods were used to test eight popular social network applications that are currently used by millions of users. The paper demonstrates the types of vulnerabilities that were found in these applications, also analyzes the threats with the most significant potential impact on the business environment and provides recommendations for reducing the risks of their occurrence.