The cybersecurity landscape is evolving at a fast pace. Hackers constantly sophisticate their attack techniques while security vendors push their technologies forward to keep warding threats off efficiently. Mobile security has become in the last couple years a major topic for security teams, as nearly all workforces now use mobile devices for work purpose. According to our team, here is what should be expected in 2020.
The largest online retailers in the world offer their products through mobile applications that are used by billions of customers. As a result, nowadays 82% of internet users shop online through their mobile device, according to a Statista report.
When a mobile application handles personal and financial data, it is required by data privacy laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2), to embed security capabilities that’ll enforce privacy by design and prevent data breach.
The Pradeo Lab looked into Google Play’s 38 most downloaded shopping apps, shredding them with its app security testing tool. The results show they overly process personal data and handle them in a poorly secure manner.
FaceApp is currently highly questioned in the press. A lot of articles and some American politicians relate that the Russian mobile application collects and exfiltrates its users’ personal data, without specifying which. Real threat or fake news? The FaceApp security analysis performed by the Pradeo Security engine clarifies things. Here is a part of it.
Updated on June 7th: Following the announcement of these discoveries, the "Peel Smart Remote" mobile application was removed from Google Play.
The Peel Smart Remote app is a widely used Google Play application (100M+ installs) that has often made the news because of its highly intrusive behaviors, such as full screen overlays and untimely advertising, causing poor user experience.
Last week, the Pradeo Security engine alerted its users about severe security issues discovered in the app’s 10.7.3.3 version. It has been found that the application collects and leaks users’ pictures to a server that does not belong to the app publisher. Last Friday, the application was updated on the Google Play store (now version 10.7.4.2), the leaky behavior has been removed from the code but yet no communication was made by the company on this matter. Because applications’ update is not automatic on all Android devices, millions of users running the former version of the app are still currently exposed.