Mobile Security
iOS and Android App Security Testing: A Complete Guide
What mobile app security testing actually covers, from local storage to certificate pinning.
LOZULA Senior Security Research Team
2025-11-11
8 min read
Key Takeaways for Security Teams
- Mobile testing has to cover the binary itself, not just the APIs it calls.
- Certificate pinning and secure local storage are the two most commonly missed controls.
- React Native and Flutter apps need framework-specific tooling, standard mobile scanners often miss bridge-layer issues.
Mobile app security testing evaluates how an iOS or Android app stores data, communicates with backend services, and resists reverse engineering, catching risks that web-focused testing misses entirely.
What Makes Mobile Testing Different From Web Testing
A mobile app is really two attack surfaces: the client binary sitting on a device an attacker can physically inspect, and the backend APIs it talks to. Web application testing methodology only covers the second half.
- •Static analysis of the compiled binary (APK/IPA) for hardcoded secrets and weak obfuscation
- •Dynamic analysis while the app runs, intercepting traffic and inspecting runtime memory
- •Local storage review for unencrypted tokens, cached PII, and insecure SQLite databases
- •Platform-specific checks: Keychain misuse on iOS, exported Activities/Intents on Android
Common Findings in Mobile Apps
The same categories of issues show up repeatedly across iOS and Android codebases, regardless of framework.
- •Missing or improperly implemented SSL/TLS certificate pinning, allowing traffic interception
- •API keys or backend secrets embedded directly in the app binary
- •Sensitive data written to logs or crash reporting tools in plaintext
- •Root/jailbreak detection that is trivially bypassed or entirely absent