In our first blog post, Rethink Your Approach to Secure Mobile Application Development, we began to explore the 5 Reasons Why mobile application development teams should rethink the way they approach the build, test and secure the data within these apps. Our first reason for a new approach is focused on physical devices and their limitations. However, although simulators and emulators are tools that can be used in developing mobile applications, they come with limitations as well, both for iOS and Android devices. You can read more about this topic in our previous blog, Corellium Virtual iOS Devices vs. Apple’s iOS Simulator and Physical Devices: The Ultimate Tool for Penetration Testing
An emulator tries to mimic both the hardware and software of a mobile device, while a simulator is focused on replicating the software environment and application behavior, not necessarily the hardware. Both simulators and emulations merely mimic the behavior of a system. They are often limited to only one device or OS platform which makes scale challenging and not suited to large enterprises.
Application development testers have many choices when it comes to Android emulators. Although emulators mimic the software and hardware of an Android device, they do not mimic a rooted device. Testing on a rooted device is critical for mobile application development because it enables testing of application behavior. This includes how the application handles system level modifications, whether the application can identify it’s running on a rooted device, and how the application would handle security risks from root access like unauthorized access or tampering with the application.
Emulators are not available for iOS devices, although iOS simulators exist, they have numerous limitations and are only useful during application development. iOS simulators are designed for application development, not testing. The simulator operates in a macOS sandbox, so testing at the system level is not possible, and it cannot replicate a jailbroken environment. This means it also doesn’t allow for testing for security risks such as how an application would handle running on a jailbroken device, or security risks like unauthorized access or tampering of an application.
The ability of DevSecOps teams to have the ability to test mobile apps in the most realistic environment possible is critical, especially when it comes to minimizing risk from data leakage and data compromise. Corellium’s virtual hardware platform delivers the ability to create a jailbroken virtual device in minutes, pair it with an array of os options, and easily upload your mobile application for thorough testing.
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