Upwardly Mobile - API & App Security News Podcast Por Approov Limited arte de portada

Upwardly Mobile - API & App Security News

Upwardly Mobile - API & App Security News

De: Approov Limited
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Dive into the high-stakes world of mobile app development and API security with Upwardly Mobile, your ultimate guide to defending apps in today’s volatile digital landscape. Hosted by Skye Macintyre and George McGregor, and proudly sponsored by Approov, the gold standard in mobile app attestation and API security. This podcast unpacks the evolving AI enabled threats and innovative solutions shaping mobile cybersecurity. Explore why built-in protection from Apple, Google, Samsung and Huawei often fall short, leaving sensitive data vulnerable. Learn how advanced techniques—like runtime attestation and dynamic API security—thwart attackers and secure your app ecosystem. Each episode delivers insights into major data breaches, emerging trends, and actionable strategies to fortify your apps and APIs against ever-advancing cyber threats. From development best practices to navigating compliance and regulation, Upwardly Mobile equips iOS, Android and HarmonyOS mobile developers, security professionals, and tech enthusiasts with the knowledge to safeguard their creations. Stay informed, stay secure, and stay ahead with expert guidance on the future of mobile cybersecurity. Subscribe now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and elevate your security game!2025 Approov Limited Economía Finanzas Personales Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • The $7M Blindspot: Mobile App Security's Hidden Costs and Fortifying APIs with Zero Trust

    The $7M Blindspot: Mobile App Security's Hidden Costs and Fortifying APIs with Zero Trust
    Jul 17 2025
    In this episode of Upwardly Mobile, we dive deep into the critical, yet often underestimated, world of mobile app security. Drawing on recent research, we uncover a staggering misalignment between perception and reality, highlighting why organizations are facing an average of nine mobile app security incidents per year, with an average financial toll reaching $6.99 million in 2025.While 93% of organizations believe their mobile app protections are sufficient, a substantial 62% have experienced at least one security incident in the past year. The repercussions extend beyond financial losses, including application downtime, sensitive data leaks, erosion of consumer trust, and a diminished user experience.We explore why traditional security measures, particularly code obfuscation, are no longer enough. Obfuscation, while deterring casual attackers, is ultimately a deterrent, not a preventative measure, offering minimal protection against runtime threats, dynamic analysis, and AI-assisted reverse engineering.The real target for modern attackers is increasingly Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Mobile apps serve as entry points to exploit backend APIs for credential stuffing, data scraping, and business logic abuse, none of which static defenses can prevent. The weaponization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) further escalates these threats, enabling automated botnets, adaptive malware, and accelerated vulnerability discovery.The solution? A crucial shift towards a dynamic, runtime-centric security model rooted in Zero Trust principles. This approach demands continuous monitoring and verification, moving beyond static, pre-deployment checks to protect apps during execution.Key elements of this essential dynamic security strategy include:• Mobile Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP): Acting as the app’s internal bodyguard, RASP detects and responds to runtime threats like debuggers, tampering, root/jailbreak, and hooking frameworks, offering real-time protection and contextual awareness.• App Attestation & API Request Validation: This is a standout feature, ensuring that only requests truly originating from your official, unmodified mobile app, running on a non-compromised device, are allowed to access your backend APIs. This effectively blocks bots, scripts, tampered apps, and mitigates API abuse.• Runtime Secrets Protection: This critical measure removes sensitive secrets (like API keys) from the app's code entirely. Instead, secrets are delivered securely at runtime, just-in-time, and only to attested apps, preventing extraction through reverse engineering.• Dynamic Channel Protection (Dynamic Pinning): Unlike brittle static certificate pinning, dynamic pinning allows for secure, over-the-air updates of certificate pins, ensuring continuous protection against Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks without requiring app store updates.We also differentiate between leading mobile app security solutions:• Guardsquare, with products like DexGuard and iXGuard, excels in client-side mobile app protection, focusing on code obfuscation, hardening, and RASP to make the app's code incredibly difficult to compromise on the device.• Approov emphasizes remote mobile app attestation, performing deep, continuous inspection of the mobile app and device in the cloud. This server-side decision-making makes it significantly harder for attackers to bypass the attestation process, ensuring only genuine apps access your APIs. Approov's positive security model effectively "locks down" backend APIs.Ideally, a comprehensive mobile app security strategy leverages both types of solutions: Guardsquare for strong in-app protection, and Approov for critical API integrity and abuse prevention. This multi-layered approach, combining static and dynamic defenses, is no longer optional but a fundamental requirement for achieving adequate resilience against modern mobile threats.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Relevant Links to Source Materials:• Learn more about the research highlighting the mobile app security blindspot: "Research exposes $7M mobile app security blindspot fueled by overconfidence" • Explore in-depth the need for dynamic defenses: "WP- Mobile Security Beyond Obfuscation v1.0 FINAL B.pdf".• Discover Approov's approach to superior mobile API protection: "Approov: Superior Mobile API Protection via Remote Attestation".Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Approov. Safeguard your mobile apps and APIs with their unique, patented runtime shielding solution. Visit approov.io to learn more.
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    13 m
  • Smart Home Security: Navigating IoT Risks with Advanced Mobile App Protection

    Smart Home Security: Navigating IoT Risks with Advanced Mobile App Protection
    Jul 14 2025
    In this episode, we dive deep into the pressing concerns of Internet of Things (IoT) security, especially within our increasingly connected smart homes. From smart refrigerators to water shut-off valves, these devices offer immense convenience but also present tempting targets for cybercriminals. We'll explore the array of vulnerabilities, real-world attack statistics, and the innovative solutions emerging to protect our digital and physical spaces.Key Discussion Points:The Alarming State of IoT Security:A shocking 57% of IoT devices are vulnerable to medium- or high-severity attacks, with 70% having serious security vulnerabilities overall.A staggering 98% of IoT device traffic is unencrypted, and 43% of manufacturers don't even encrypt data during transmission, leaving sensitive information exposed. This is often due to cost-saving measures or limited processing power in basic device chips.The volume of threats is immense, with 1.5 billion IoT attacks detected in just the first half of 2021. Devices can be targeted within 5 minutes of connecting to the internet, as bots constantly scan for new exploits.IoT devices are a prime attack vector, accounting for 41% of attacks on enterprises in 2020 and comprising 33% of infected devices in botnets like Mirai. The infamous Mirai botnet, which shut down major internet services in 2016, infected over 25 million IoT devices by exploiting weak or default credentials, turning common items like printers and baby monitors into attack armies.Smart home attacks rose by 600% in a single year, highlighting the escalating risk to everyday gadgets.Many organizations face significant challenges, with 72% struggling to discover and classify all IoT devices on their networks, and 67% having limited or no visibility into their IoT environments.A critical issue is the widespread use of weak or default passwords, responsible for 91% of IoT data breaches, alongside the concerning fact that 40% of IoT devices no longer receive vendor security updates, leaving them vulnerable.Real-world incidents, such as cyberattacks on municipal water infrastructure, serve as a stark warning, demonstrating that compromised water control systems can have severe physical consequences, including interference with water composition or service disruption.The Smart Home Ecosystem: A "Toxic Combination" of Apps and APIs:Smart homes are controlled through a complex web of mobile apps and APIs, connecting everything from smart ovens to security cameras.This creates a "toxic combination": mobile apps can be cloned, tampered with, or run on compromised devices, while APIs can be reverse-engineered and invoked by bots or fake clients. Attackers can easily automate abuse once app-to-API traffic is understood.Hackers exploit common issues like lack of app attestation, repackaged or tampered apps, no detection of rooted/jailbroken devices, bypass of obfuscation, API keys hardcoded in the app, and static TLS certificate pins.Threats extend beyond simple data breaches to more severe outcomes like device hijacking, Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks, ransomware, and botnet creation, allowing malicious actors to manipulate physical devices or launch large-scale attacks.Even smart water shutoff systems like Phyn, Moen Flo, and Flo-Logic, while protecting against water damage, introduce data privacy implications (e.g., detailed water usage patterns revealing intimate household routines) and the risk of unauthorized remote control by malicious actors who could repeatedly toggle the water supply, causing disruption or damage. Moen's privacy statement explicitly notes its business model includes "monetizing data".Building a Secure Foundation: Solutions and Best Practices:Adapting OAuth2 for IoT: The OAuth2 open authorization standard, popular on the web, is being adapted to help secure access to IoT devices. This involves the authorization grant flow where a client obtains an access token to delegate access to server resources. Modifications are necessary for constrained IoT environments, such as dynamically securing the channel between a client and resource server (e.g., Alice's phone and a door lock) by using a possession key shared via the authorization server. Another example is a medical device scenario where the authorization server encrypts the possession key into the access token claims using a pre-provisioned key pair.Beyond Static Secrets: A more secure approach involves removing static client secrets from mobile apps and leveraging remote attestation services. A dynamic attestation service can verify an app's authenticity at runtime, returning an authenticating, time-limited client integrity token.Zero Trust Security Model: Smart home platforms should adopt a Zero Trust security model, which inherently trusts nothing by default. Instead, each and every API request must cryptographically prove it originates from a legitimate, unmodified mobile app at runtime. This involves per-request attestation using ...
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    14 m
  • Unlocking Zero Trust for Mobile Apps: Bridging the Security Gap

    Unlocking Zero Trust for Mobile Apps: Bridging the Security Gap
    Jul 11 2025
    In this insightful episode of "Upwardly Mobile," we look into the critical importance of extending Zero Trust principles to consumer-facing mobile applications. Despite the widespread adoption of the "never trust, always verify" security model across enterprises, mobile apps often remain a significant blind spot, operating in uncontrolled and untrusted environments. This oversight exposes organizations to sophisticated attacks, directly impacting customer trust, regulatory compliance, and revenue.Why is mobile the weakest link in today's Zero Trust architecture and how modern threats like silent escalation, runtime tampering, and reverse engineering specifically target the post-installation, runtime environment of mobile apps. With over 33 million mobile cyberattacks recorded globally in 2024, the urgency to act is clear.Learn about the strategic roadmap for closing this mobile security gap by embedding Zero Trust at the app runtime layer. We discuss how established frameworks such as NIST SP 800-207, the CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model, OWASP MASVS, and the MITRE ATT&CK Mobile Matrix can be adapted to secure mobile applications, focusing on continuous monitoring, verification, and protection.Key takeaways include:• The "Never Trust, Always Verify" Principle for Mobile: Every interaction, from the mobile app to backend APIs, must adhere to strict verification protocols, treating all mobile devices as potentially untrusted.• The Criticality of Runtime Protection: Traditional pre-deployment checks are insufficient as attackers manipulate apps after installation. Continuous monitoring of app integrity and behavior is essential.• Key Components for Mobile Zero Trust: This includes strong Authentication and Authorization (including MFA), Mobile App Attestation to verify app and device integrity, robust API Security, and Secure Communication (e.g., TLS with certificate pinning).• Dynamic Secrets Management: Avoid hardcoding secrets. Instead, manage and deliver them dynamically from the cloud, ensuring sensitive data is never exposed client-side.• Operationalizing Zero Trust Frameworks: Implementing a runtime-centric approach where security decisions are made inside the app, feeding app-level insights into enterprise security operations.• The Business Impact: Proactive mobile app protection reduces breach risks, streamlines compliance (PSD2, GDPR, HIPAA), accelerates secure product delivery, and builds user trust, demonstrating measurable ROI.Sponsored by Approov: Approov provides a comprehensive solution for implementing Zero Trust security in mobile applications and their APIs. Their features include Positive App Authentication, Man-in-the-Middle Attack Protection, Dynamic Secrets Management, and Comprehensive Environment Checks to detect compromised devices and malicious instrumentation. Approov ensures that every call to an API from the mobile app is from a genuine, unmodified app running in a safe environment, with policies updated in real-time.Relevant Links & Resources:• Approov Mobile Security Knowledge Base: Approov Mobile Security Knowledge Base• How to Implement Zero Trust for Mobile Apps (Approov): How to Implement Zero Trust for Mobile Apps• Why Is Zero Trust Not Systematically Applied to Mobile App Security? (Approov): Why is Zero Trust Not Systematically Applied to Mobile App Security?• Promon SHIELD® for Mobile & More: Products• A guide to Zero Trust for your mobile apps (Promon): Bringing Zero Trust to mobile applications• OWASP Zero Trust Architecture Cheat Sheet: OWASP Zero Trust Architecture Cheat Sheet• OWASP Mobile App Security Verification Standard (MASVS): What is the OWASP MASVS?• Promon Mobile App Security Library: All Resources--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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    12 m
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