Due to the exponential growth in the usage of mobile applications, consumers are finding it very convenient, and vulnerability related to mobile applications has also increased. OWASP mobile top 10 is one such list that will highlight the issues related to security as well as vulnerabilities that the developers need to focus on so that they can protect their applications very easily. Some of the critical insights you need to know about the OWASP mobile top list have been explained as follows:
- M4-Insufficient input and output validation: This new category perfectly emphasizes the importance of validating the input and output data in the new mobile applications and proper validation is very critical to prevent the issues like injection and cross-site scripting attacks. This particular category perfectly highlights the need for multiple data validation practices to ensure data safety and maintain the integrity of the application.
- M6- Inadequate privacy controls: This perfectly reflects the global growing concern for user privacy and the category also addresses the risks associated with insufficient privacy measures in mobile applications. This also focuses on protecting personal information ensuring the content and consent form for the data collection with handling user data with responsibility.
- M8- Security misconfiguration: This category deals with the vulnerabilities related to incorrect and incomplete security configuration because it will include the issues related to the deployment of the applications with the default settings, misconfiguration into the permissions, and mistakes in the security settings. This will eventually lead to unauthorized accessibility and data breaches which is the main reason that regular audit and review of the application configurations is advisable in this case.
- M1- Improper credential usage: The updated category in this particular case will be upon highlighting the risk associated with misuse of the credentials and the mobile applications for example hard coding sensitive information and improper management of the user credentials. Securely storing the credentials with the help of safe and secure storage solutions is important in this case so that sensitive information in plain text will be very well sorted out. Additionally, implementation of the security systems like encryption is important to improve the protection of the credentials.
- M2-Inadequate supply chain security: Reflection of the growing bond of the supply chain integrity will be based upon category focusing on the risks in the supply chain of the mobile applications including the challenges in the third-party components and dependencies. Going through the comprehensive security and less of the third-party components before integrating them into the application is important so that regular updates of the components will be done to incorporate the security patches. Using software composition analysis in tracking and monitoring third-party dependencies is important for modern organizations.
- M3-Insecure authentication and authorization: This particular category was previously famous by the name of insecure communication and now has been focusing on emphasis over the importance of robust authentication and authorization mechanisms in mobile applications. This will be further based upon preventing unauthorized accessibility and data reach in the whole process so that implementation of the strong authentication mechanism will be very well done based upon multi-factor authentication in the whole process. Eventually, this will help improve the security of the user accounts and further will help make sure that authorization checks will be very well performed so that assessment of this sensitive information will be done with proper functionality at all times.
- M5-Insecure communication: This was previously famous by the name of insecure authentication and renaming has been done to specifically address the risk associated with the insecure data transmission. The interception of sensitive data in this particular case has to be paid attention to so that there is no scope for any kind of inadequate encryption methods at any point in time. Using the transport layer security for the data in transit is definitely important for modern organizations and this implementation of the certificate pinning concept is definitely important.
- M7-Insufficient binary protection: This category has been successful in mining the risk associated with the coding tempering along with the reverse engineering from the 2016 list and further is very well focusing on protecting the binary coding of the mobile applications from being reverse engineered. Using the obfuscation application techniques in this particular case to make reverse engineering very difficult is important in addition to the implementation of the temper detection techniques and mechanisms.
- M9-Insecure data storage: This has been highly successful in including the risk related to the extraneous functionality from the 2016 list and also has been successful in emphasizing the requirement of safe and secure storage practices with strong encryption to protect the sensitive data storage on mobile devices.
- M10- Insufficient cryptography: This has been successful in combining the related with the broken cryptography from the 2016 list and category also highlights the importance of strong and encrypted cryptographic practices to ensure that confidentiality and integrity will be very well there throughout the process
- M7-Client code quality: This category from the 2016 list has been very well merged with the insufficient input and output variation in the 2024 edition which is a very important perspective to be taken into account from the developer’s point of view.
In addition to the points mentioned above it is always important for people to have a good understanding of the OWASP mobile top 10 updates which have been released recently because they clearly highlight the ever-evolving landscape of the mobile application security threats along with proactive measures of the industry to take it very seriously. This list comes with a very comprehensive framework that also keeps the developers, testers, and security professionals with the knowledge and tools to effectively tackle the security risks in mobile applications. Hence consistently remaining in touch with the experts at Appsealing can be considered a very good decision on the behalf of developers so that everyone will be able to go deeper into every category and access the detailed information with the best possible and effective prevention strategies.
