It’s difficult to find technically useful, well contributed information on mobile security testing and mobile software development life cycle (SDLC) best practices. There is a lot of high-level info scattered around, and it seems like new government cybersecurity publications are popping up all the time which makes it hard to tell how everything fits together. So I set out to research the topics on my own, and this blog covers what I’ve found. As I continue, and as comments come in, I’ll make corrections and updates.

Let’s start with very useful, seminal work on mobile security testing, with OWASP® contributors doing a wonderful job with two foundational works. Any searches on the topic of mobile security testing should have landed on them, but in case yours didn’t.

The first is the Mobile Security Testing Guide (MSTG)1 from OWASP. From its introduction:

“The OWASP Mobile Security Testing Guide (MSTG) is a comprehensive manual for testing the security of mobile apps. It describes processes and techniques for verifying the requirements listed in the Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (MASVS), and provides a baseline for complete and consistent security tests.”

If you haven’t seen it before, at first glance you may get the impression that it’s merely a high-level overview of basic principles that any mobile developer or security expert already knows. But in fact, it’s quite comprehensive and technically detailed, a great living work by all its contributors, and a very useful resource for new and advanced mobile security gurus alike.

The MSTG is comprised of three primary sections, again from the Guide’s overview: 

“The General Testing Guide contains a mobile app security testing methodology and general vulnerability analysis techniques as they apply to mobile app security. It also contains additional technical test cases that are OS-independent, such as authentication and session management, network communications, and cryptography.

The Android Testing Guide covers mobile security testing for the Android platform, including security basics, security test cases, reverse engineering techniques and prevention, and tampering techniques and prevention.

The iOS Testing Guide covers mobile security testing for the iOS platform, including an overview of the iOS OS, security testing, reverse engineering techniques and prevention, and tampering techniques and prevention.”

The second work from the OWASP Mobile Security Project™ and its contributors, is the Mobile AppSec Verification Standard (MASVS)1.

From its introduction, “The MASVS is a community effort to establish a framework of security requirements needed to design, develop and test secure mobile apps on iOS and Android.”

You must admit, this is a bold undertaking to produce and keep current, but it’s a sorely needed one and a job well done. A useful summary from the document:

“The MASVS defines two security verification levels (MASVS-L1 and MASVS-L2), as well as a set of reverse engineering resiliency requirements (MASVS-R). MASVS-L1 contains generic security requirements that are recommended for all mobile apps, while MASVS-L2 should be applied to apps handling highly sensitive data. MASVS-R covers additional protective controls that can be applied if preventing client-side threats is a design goal.

Fulfilling the requirements in MASVS-L1 results in a secure app that follows security best practices and doesn't suffer from common vulnerabilities. MASVS-L2 adds additional defense-in-depth controls such as SSL pinning, resulting in an app that is resilient against more sophisticated attacks - assuming the security controls of the mobile operating system are intact and the end user is not viewed as a potential adversary. Fulfilling all, or subsets of, the software protection requirements in MASVS-R helps impede specific client-side threats where the end user is malicious and/or the mobile OS is compromised.”

And now for what’s happening from the U.S. gov end of things and recent cybersecurity standards and guidance news. Let’s start with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which produces many publications on the topic of cybersecurity.

The recent news has been around the NIST 800-218 publication in 2021 and updated in February 2022, entitled “Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF): Recommendations for Mitigating the Risk of Software Vulnerabilities”.

It’s a comprehensive and relevant work as it applies to mobile software development and testing. Excusing the pun, it sets the new standard as far as past security frameworks for SDLC go. It contains numerous references to useful resources, and the OWASP MASVS resource is primarily referenced within the Produce Well-Secured Software (PW) section.

I find the NIST SSDF publication to be well thought-out and as you read through the examples for each “task”, it makes for a good checklist to walk through for your mobile software development practices (or any software development). Some tasks are easier said than done, but it provides for a great “you are here” resource for understanding your current SDLC security posture and what you need to keep an eye on moving forward.

Having no affiliation with it, I found this blog useful when reading NIST 800-218:

I Read NIST 800-218 So You Don’t Have To - Here’s What to Watch Out For, by Dan Lorenc.

When searching for other NIST cybersecurity initiatives that are currently underway, I found the following particularly interesting. They are looking into consumer labeling practices for both software and IoT devices. In a nutshell, when software or IoT devices are made available for end-use, the level of security testing performed or achieved would be clearly indicated. According to the links below, an initial summary report is to be published by May 12, 2022. This will be interesting to say the least and I’ll update this blog with relevant information.

Recommended Criteria for Cybersecurity Labeling of Consumer Software

Consumer Cybersecurity Labeling Pilots: The Approach and Contributions

There also have been recent news headlines made by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency (CISA), first established in 2018.

Zero Trust Maturity Model, introduced in September 2021, and

Applying Zero Trust Principles to Enterprise Mobility, newly introduced in March 2022.

These works, to me at least, are more indirectly related to mobile security testing and SDLC best practices. This makes sense as Zero Trust refers to user access privileges and hence the in-production phases of SDLC.

But I would have hoped that Zero Trust would have extended to cover the design and development phases of the SDLC as more and more vulnerabilities are likely to be introduced well before software deliveries.

In the Zero Trust Maturity Model document, the topic of app security development and testing is included in the Application Workload pillar and its Application Security guidance, but that’s about it. It doesn’t use the acronyms, but it’s basically implying a shift from DevOps to DevSecOps. 

Traditional – Agency performs application security testing prior to deployment, primarily through static and manual testing methods.

Advanced – Agency integrates application security testing into the application development and deployment process, including the use of dynamic testing methods.

Optimal – Agency integrates application security testing throughout the development and deployment process, with regular automated testing of deployed applications.”

Looking through the Applying Zero Trust Principles to Enterprise Mobility document, you eventually reach “Table 1: Enterprise Mobile Security Components”. And wading through each, mobile security testing lands on its relatively small Mobile App Vetting (MAV) component.

Not bad I suppose for a CISA framework where the Zero Trust context aims at a different aspect of mobile security and different phase of mobile software development. Would have been helpful if CISA’s MAV and NIST’s SSDF were linked or cross-referenced.

I’d keep an eye on CISA “Zero Trust” publications, but looks like the NIST “SSDF” publications are currently more directly relevant to the topic of mobile security testing and mobile SDLC.

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1 OWASP trademarks and published works belong to and are under copyright by The OWASP Foundation. The OWASP works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of the works.

It’s hard to find useful, well contributed to information on mobile security testing and best practices. Recent cybersecurity publications from U.S. gov agencies often confuse the search. Here’s one interpretation of how they’re interrelated.

Where does Mobile App Security Testing fit into the latest NIST SSDF and CISA Zero Trust publications?

2021 has been an incredible year for us. Like most of the world, it's been a year of change, hope, and growth. We've proudly welcomed hundreds of new businesses, government agencies, and security community professionals to our virtualization platform. And we’ve been expanding our developer and customer success teams as quickly as possible to support our fast pace of innovation.

Today, we're excited to announce that we've raised $25M in Series A funding led by our friends at Paladin Capital Group, Cisco Investments and a few other strategic supporters.

This equity-only round will be used to accelerate our growth, support partnership initiatives, and expand our platform to deliver a wider variety of virtual IoT devices.

For the last four years, our focus has been on creating an incredible security research tool for iOS and Android by bringing a better alternative to the mobile device emulator and device lab markets. While this is still a key focus for us, we're using this new funding to broaden our horizons, with the goal of becoming the go-to platform for testing, research, and development on all Arm-powered IoT devices - from routers to cars to robots.

“In a world of increasing security threats, malware attacks, and dynamic security regulations, effective full-stack system testing - apps, firmware, and hardware - is more critical and complex than ever. As the world’s 13 million Arm developers shift to DevSecOps, Corellium provides the tools they need in a scalable, repeatable, high-performance, high-accuracy, and cost-effective solution. We are excited to be partnering with Corellium in its next phase of growth as the company continues to expand its technical offerings.”

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Because our virtual models run natively on Arm, developers can run production code without making changes, and they run with native-like speed. Combined with our powerful security tools, our advanced virtual environment vastly improves and accelerates end-to-end development, testing, and security acceptance lifecycles on Arm. And to best meet our diverse customer needs, we offer our virtual platform as a Cloud service or as on-site server appliances.

"We know our customers need to be supported across hybrid processor environments. That’s why we are excited to invest in Corellium because it gives customers a new virtualized development paradigm, enabling effective penetration assessment, application testing, and security and threat intelligence research at scale.”

We have big plans for 2022 and we’re grateful for the love and support of the security community and remain steadfastly focused on creating products that work like magic. ✨

If you're excited about what we're working on and want to join us on our journey, check out our open roles. You can also read more about our Series A funding on Forbes, BusinessWire or the Cisco Investments Blog.

We've raised a Series A round with our friends at Paladin and Cisco Investments.

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There are now Go builders on http://build.golang.org for android/arm, android/arm64, darwin/arm64 (iOS) running on virtual @CorelliumHQ devices. Thanks to @steeve and @zenlyapp we might soon get rid of slow and unreliable physical test devices.

Go is now self hosted on iOS and Android. Meaning it doesn't need a host to compile and run programs on those platforms. What a fine job @eliasnaur and @CorelliumHQ.

Thank you @CorelliumHQ for supporting our training session with your iOS and Android virtual devices! It will be a huge help for our students at @typhooncon 10th June // Seoul "Offensive Mobile Reversing and Exploitation". For registration go to typhooncon.com/registration/

Just got my hands on @CorelliumHQ — saying that my mind is blown is an understatement. This is the future of iOS security research. (and my eternal fear of bootlooping my physical devices is gone!)  Huge thanks to @cmwdotme and @chronic!

@CorelliumHQ is easily one of the most impressive platforms I've seen. Happy to share that students attending the @BlackHatEvents @MDSecLabs Mobile Training will get to play with this first hand! blackhat.com/us-18/training... #BHUSA

Live kernel debugging on a virtualised iOS 12.0! Having the ability to do this sort of thing with whichever iPhone/version you want is gonna greatly assist developers & researchers with future iOS kernel security research.

So much this. Craziest thing for me was just having it show up as a run destination in Xcode (oh yeah and it has ssh and cycript). Real iOS virtualization in the cloud is /awesome/. Nice work @cmwdotme and team!

Watching an online virtual iPhone 8 Plus installing a copy of iOS 11.4 in a browser is *wild*. Then proxying it to USB so you can build & run directly from Xcode? @cmwdotme's @CorelliumHQ is so freaking cool.

Saying that my mind is blown is an understatement. This is the future of security research.

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Built on what it claims is massive demand for its tool that creates virtual Android and iPhone devices for security testing, it announced a Series A funding round on Thursday at $25 million, led by Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Cisco Investments.

Corellium Scores $25 Million Funding To Build Android And iPhone Cyber Research Juggernaut

Corellium had caused a stir in the security community in 2018 when Forbes revealed its plans to allow researchers to spin up iPhones on their laptops to start probing iOS for security weaknesses or usability flaws.

Apple Drops iPhone Copyright Lawsuit Against Cyber Startup Corellium

Previously, Corellium restricted iOS-based device virtualization to enterprise accounts through its CORSEC platform, with Android tools available to both enterprise and individual users.

Corellium opens iOS device virtualization support to individual accounts

There are some champions trying to make the online world a safer place. Our inaugural Forbes Cybersecurity Awards celebrate their achievements.

Forbes Cybersecurity Awards 2020: Corellium, The Tiny Startup Driving Apple Crazy

Every benevolent hacker dreams of a space replete with software they can manipulate to make it do things it shouldn't. But oftentimes it's neither cheap nor easy to acquire and maintain all that tech, especially when you're trying to break it, risking its very usefulness.

This Super Stealth Startup Has Built An Apple Hacker's Paradise

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Last week, Arm gave us a glimpse into the future by unveiling the next-generation of Arm processors: the Armv9 architecture. This is a huge deal for the future of mobile devices. The device you’re carrying around in your pocket is almost certainly running on an Arm-based processor, so these processor-level improvements will lead to faster, smarter, and more secure devices that you use day-to-day.

There are two groups of features in Armv9 that we’re particularly excited about. The first is that next-generation Arm processors will have security built in right at their very core. That includes features like the new Confidential Compute Architecture built around TrustZone, as well as brand new security features like Memory Tagging Extensions (MTE) specifically designed to help secure devices against sophisticated memory-corruption attacks.

The second exciting group of features are all about performance. Armv9 improves Scalable Vector Extension to SVE2, adds new features and optimizations for machine learning, and adds new features like the Transactional Memory Extension (TME) to make parallelizable programs even faster. These improvements won’t just make devices faster, they’ll also be helping power even better quality video, graphics, and games on your next-gen device.

Last week, Arm gave us a glimpse into the future by unveiling the next-generation of Arm processors: the Armv9 architecture. This is a huge deal for the future of mobile devices, and there are two groups of features in Armv9 that we’re particularly excited about.