Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Examples in Mobile Application Testing

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) database was created to give security teams a single, standardized list of publicly known security vulnerabilities. Each CVE entry assigns an ID and description to a vulnerability, whether it’s a buffer overflow in a library, a weak encryption protocol, or an SDK leaking data. 

The idea is simple: 

• One global catalog for vendors, researchers, and defenders to speak the same language. 
• A unique identifier (CVE-2024-26131, for example) that anyone can reference in advisories, tools, or patches. 
• A way to prioritize remediation by tracking which CVEs apply to your software stack. 

That’s the foundation CVEs were meant to provide. 

The limitation is equally clear. A CVE entry does not confirm whether a specific application or SDK is actually exploitable.

• A CVE might describe a vulnerability in an open-source library, but unless you know exactly which version you included, you don’t know if the app is impacted. 
• A CVE might be marked critical, but in some environments it may not be reachable at all.
• Many CVEs are published without a working proof-of-concept or exploit, which makes it unclear how they behave in practice. 

The CVE database describes what exists globally, but it does not prove whether a vulnerability can impact a specific mobile app or SDK.

The number of CVEs published each year has been rising steadily for the past decade, according to CVE.org. In 2024, there were over 40,009 new CVEs, marking a 38% increase over the previous year. That’s more than 100 new CVEs per day on average. 

That volume drowns teams in noise, making it harder to identify what truly matters, especially in mobile app development: 

• Mobile apps rely on a mix of SDKs and libraries, many sourced from external vendors or open-source projects.
• iOS devices remain tightly locked down, and without a jailbreak testing is limited to the app sandbox. 
• Most teams lack the ability to validate whether a CVE can actually be triggered in their codebase or only poses a theoretical risk.

Examples of CVEs That Impact Mobile App Security

Not every CVE in the database applies directly to mobile devices or applications. Many cover servers, enterprise infrastructure, web frameworks, or even IoT devices. However, the fraction that does apply to mobile is more than enough to create a serious problem.

These vulnerabilities often target SDKs, third-party libraries, or mobile OS systems that sit deep in the app stack. Just one of these issues can expose sensitive data, leak credentials, or compromise use privacy at scale.

Here are real-world CVEs where mobile applications were directly linked to data exposure: 

• CVE-2024-26131: (Element Android App) Improper intent handling allowed malicious third-party apps to redirect Element’s internal activities. This enabled unauthorized file access, bypass of PIN protection, and fake login prompts to steal credentials. 
• CVE-2023-6542 (SAP Emarsys SDK): A critical flaw in the Android marketing SDK made it possible for attackers to extract files from the app’s private storage directory. It also allowed deceptive content overlays, creating a path for data theft and phishing inside otherwise trusted apps. 
• Operation Triangulation CVE Chain: (CVE-2023-38606, CVE-2023-32434, CVE-2023-32435, CVE-2023-41990) A coordinated iOS zero-day spyware campaign delivered through iMessage. The chain of kernel and WebKit vulnerabilities allowed attackers to extract user data including messages, passwords, photos, and geolocation without any user interaction. 

These are real-world examples of mobile application CVEs and highlight the problem with testing mobile apps before they ship. Teams are constantly forced to balance speed with security, and without scalable solutions that deliver accuracy, vulnerabilities slip into production.

Why Mobile Security Testing Must Scale With Development

Catching vulnerabilities before release requires more than a static report. Mobile security testing has to scale with the same speed as development, or flaws slip into production. Relying on outdated or piecemeal approaches slows teams down and leaves blind spots.

The baseline should include:

1. Automated Mobile App Security Testing
   Static (SAST) and dynamic (DAST) scans are essential. They catch insecure coding patterns and surface-level misconfigurations early in the development pipeline. But on their own, they cannot confirm whether a CVE is actually exploitable in a live app environment.
2. A platform that exercises real usage
   Developers and security engineers need the ability to reproduce exploits, trace runtime behavior, and observe data leakage in realistic conditions. Virtualized environments provide controlled, repeatable ways to validate CVEs at scale without waiting on rare jailbreaks or rooted devices.
3. Virtualized iOS and Android Devices, not real devices
   Hardware-based jailbreaking is inconsistent, slow, and increasingly impractical. It does not scale, it leaves forensic artifacts, and it lags behind OS release cycles. Teams that rely on physical rooted devices for testing will always be behind. Virtualized solutions remove those bottlenecks by providing root-level access instantly, across multiple OS versions, with full instrumentation.
   
   

Why Mobile Security Testing Must Scale With Development

Mobile app testing is particularly critical to reduce the risk of data leakage or data compromise in industries with sensitive data and significant penalties, such as health care and financial services. The irony is that as iOS becomes more secure and new versions ship faster, it becomes harder for development teams to build and test applications securely. 

Corellium Viper with MATRIX closes this gap by transforming CVEs from static database entries into live, testable scenarios. 

Viper lets teams spin up virtual iOS devices in either a stock or jailbroken state, across any OS version, instantly. This removes the dependency on rare public jailbreaks or physical test devices and provides the flexibility to test apps under both normal and jailbroken conditions. 

It also makes it possible to bypass jailbreak detection, a feature increasingly built into sensitive apps like banking, payments, and healthcare. 

As Corellium research has shown, many apps assume they are secure simply because they block jailbroken devices. In practice, this leads to a false sense of security and prevents researchers from testing how apps behave under real attack conditions.

Combined with automated security assessments and real-time reporting, teams can validate vulnerabilities and confirm fixes with speed and confidence. 

Security researchers, pentesters, and mobile developers can: 

•  Reproduce exploits and observe their real impact against apps in a safe environment.
• Diff patches by snapshotting an iOS OTA before and after an update to see what changed at the binary or syscall level. 
• Hook and trace behavior using Frida, LLDB, or built-in instrumentation to follow memory access, API misuse, and runtime patterns tied to CVEs. 
• Automate audits with MATRIX to detect CVE signatures, insecure traffic, weak encryption, and data leakage in SDKs and libraries. 

Instead of generic compliance outputs, MATRIX delivers actionable results that show which vulnerabilities matter, how they can be exploited, and how to validate fixes at scale.

Validating CVEs Before Apps Ship

For commercial teams, this approach validates vulnerabilities before applications make it to production. For research and mission-focused teams, it provides the ability to reproduce and analyze CVEs without waiting for jailbreaks or relying on limited physical devices.

The real value is not in knowing that thousands of CVEs exist. The value is in proving which ones can actually be exploited in the mobile applications and SDKs that matter.

Shipping Securely Means Moving Beyond CVE Awareness

The CVE database is an essential resource, but it does not solve the problem of exploitability. Without testing, CVEs remain theoretical risks.

Viper + MATRIX close that gap. They provide the ability to map CVEs directly against mobile applications and SDKs, reproduce exploits in controlled environments, validate patches, and generate results that guide both remediation and research.

CVE awareness is no longer enough. CVE validation is the standard teams need to reach, and Viper + MATRIX deliver it.

And for teams balancing regulatory pressure, MATRIX also automates many of the common OWASP checks, along with compliance-focused tests for HIPAA and PCI, ensuring that while you focus on real exploitability, the boxes are checked for auditors as well.

Ready to learn more? Request a free trial of Viper with MATRIX today.