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AppUse and Server-Side Attacks on Android Applications

Introduction

We all know our smartphones contain a lot of sensitive information about us, from credit card details through WhatsApp correspondence, our location, pictures and more.

Today we see serious development of the telephony field; banks and credit card companies are developing account management telephone applications, chat applications which hold a history of our conversations, and much more important information of ours is managed by the smartphone.

The Android operating system (OS) architecture allows the programmer to broadly manage the information; to create components which are accessible to other applications on the device, to save data in dangerous locations and so information can easily be managed incorrectly. In addition, many programmers who have always developed server-side applications are now faced with the need to develop client-side applications and are not aware of the possible risk – which, in turn, increases the known attacking surface available to the attacker.

When a tester performs a penetration test to an Android application, it is divided into to two main areas:

  • Client-Side Attacks – include client-side vulnerabilities such as saving sensitive information in a dangerous manner, saving passwords in the code, manipulation of activities, broadcast receivers, etc.
  • Server-Side Attacks – include applicative server-side vulnerabilities such as XSS, SQLi, Authorization Bypass, Authentication Bypass, etc.

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