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Mobile App Code Quality

Mobile app developers use a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks. As such, common vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, buffer overflows, and cross-site scripting (XSS), may manifest in apps when neglecting secure programming practices.

The same programming flaws may affect both Android and iOS apps to some degree, so we’ll provide an overview of the most common vulnerability classes frequently in the general section of the guide. In later sections, we will cover OS-specific instances and exploit mitigation features.

Injection Flaws

An injection flaw describes a class of security vulnerability occurring when user input is inserted into backend queries or commands. By injecting meta-characters, an attacker can execute malicious code that is inadvertently interpreted as part of the command or query. For example, by manipulating a SQL query, an attacker could retrieve arbitrary database records or manipulate the content of the backend database.

Vulnerabilities of this class are most prevalent in server-side web services. Exploitable instances also exist within mobile apps, but occurrences are less common, plus the attack surface is smaller.

For example, while an app might query a local SQLite database, such databases usually do not store sensitive data (assuming the developer followed basic security practices). This makes SQL injection a non-viable attack vector. Nevertheless, exploitable injection vulnerabilities sometimes occur, meaning proper input validation is a necessary best practice for programmers.

SQL Injection

A SQL injection attack involves integrating SQL commands into input data, mimicking the syntax of a predefined SQL command. A successful SQL injection attack allows the attacker to read or write to the database and possibly execute administrative commands, depending on the permissions granted by the server.

Apps on both Android and iOS use SQLite databases as a means to control and organize local data storage. Assume an Android app handles local user authentication by storing the user credentials in a local database (a poor programming practice we’ll overlook for the sake of this example). Upon login, the app queries the database to search for a record with the username and password entered by the user:

SQLiteDatabase db;

String sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '" +  username + "' AND password = '" + password +"'";

Cursor c = db.rawQuery( sql, null );

return c.getCount() != 0;

Let’s further assume an attacker enters the following values into the “username” and “password” fields:

username = 1' or '1' = '1
password = 1' or '1' = '1

This results in the following query:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username='1' OR '1' = '1' AND Password='1' OR '1' = '1'

Because the condition '1' = '1' always evaluates as true, this query return all records in the database, causing the login function to return true even though no valid user account was entered.

Ostorlab exploited the sort parameter of Yahoo’s weather mobile application with adb using this SQL injection payload.

Another real-world instance of client-side SQL injection was discovered by Mark Woods within the “Qnotes” and “Qget” Android apps running on QNAP NAS storage appliances. These apps exported content providers vulnerable to SQL injection, allowing an attacker to retrieve the credentials for the NAS device. A detailed description of this issue can be found on the Nettitude Blog.

XML Injection

In a XML injection attack, the attacker injects XML meta-characters to structurally alter XML content. This can be used to either compromise the logic of an XML-based application or service, as well as possibly allow an attacker to exploit the operation of the XML parser processing the content.

A popular variant of this attack is XML eXternal Entity (XXE). Here, an attacker injects an external entity definition containing an URI into the input XML. During parsing, the XML parser expands the attacker-defined entity by accessing the resource specified by the URI. The integrity of the parsing application ultimately determines capabilities afforded to the attacker, where the malicious user could do any (or all) of the following: access local files, trigger HTTP requests to arbitrary hosts and ports, launch a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attack, and cause a denial-of-service condition. The OWASP web testing guide contains the following example for XXE:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
 <!DOCTYPE foo [  
  <!ELEMENT foo ANY >
  <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///dev/random" >]><foo>&xxe;</foo>

In this example, the local file /dev/random is opened where an endless stream of bytes is returned, potentially causing a denial-of-service.

The current trend in app development focuses mostly on REST/JSON-based services as XML is becoming less common. However, in the rare cases where user-supplied or otherwise untrusted content is used to construct XML queries, it could be interpreted by local XML parsers, such as NSXMLParser on iOS. As such, said input should always be validated and meta-characters should be escaped.

Injection Attack Vectors

The attack surface of mobile apps is quite different from typical web and network applications. Mobile apps don’t often expose services on the network, and viable attack vectors on an app’s user interface are rare. Injection attacks against an app are most likely to occur through inter-process communication (IPC) interfaces, where a malicious app attacks another app running on the device.

Locating a potential vulnerability begins by either:

  • Identifying possible entry points for untrusted input then tracing from those locations to see if the destination contains potentially vulnerable functions.
  • Identifying known, dangerous library / API calls (e.g. SQL queries) and then checking whether unchecked input successfully interfaces with respective queries.

During a manual security review, you should employ a combination of both techniques. In general, untrusted inputs enter mobile apps through the following channels:

  • IPC calls
  • Custom URL schemes
  • QR codes
  • Input files received via Bluetooth, NFC, or other means
  • Pasteboards
  • User interface

Verify that the following best practices have been followed:

  • Untrusted inputs are type-checked and/or validated using a list of acceptable values.
  • Prepared statements with variable binding (i.e. parameterized queries) are used when performing database queries. If prepared statements are defined, user-supplied data and SQL code are automatically separated.
  • When parsing XML data, ensure the parser application is configured to reject resolution of external entities in order to prevent XXE attack.
  • When working with x509 formatted certificate data, ensure that secure parsers are used. For instance Bouncy Castle below version 1.6 allows for Remote Code Execution by means of unsafe reflection.

We will cover details related to input sources and potentially vulnerable APIs for each mobile OS in the OS-specific testing guides.

Cross-Site Scripting Flaws

Cross-site scripting (XSS) issues allow attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by users. This type of vulnerability is prevalent in web applications. When a user views the injected script in a browser, the attacker gains the ability to bypass the same origin policy, enabling a wide variety of exploits (e.g. stealing session cookies, logging key presses, performing arbitrary actions, etc.).

In the context of native apps, XSS risks are far less prevalent for the simple reason these kinds of applications do not rely on a web browser. However, apps using WebView components, such as WKWebView or the deprecated UIWebView on iOS and WebView on Android, are potentially vulnerable to such attacks.

An older but well-known example is the local XSS issue in the Skype app for iOS, first identified by Phil Purviance. The Skype app failed to properly encode the name of the message sender, allowing an attacker to inject malicious JavaScript to be executed when a user views the message. In his proof-of-concept, Phil showed how to exploit the issue and steal a user’s address book.

Static Analysis - Security Testing Considerations

Take a close look at any WebViews present and investigate for untrusted input rendered by the app.

XSS issues may exist if the URL opened by WebView is partially determined by user input. The following example is from an XSS issue in the Zoho Web Service, reported by Linus Särud.

Java

webView.loadUrl("javascript:initialize(" + myNumber + ");");

Kotlin

webView.loadUrl("javascript:initialize($myNumber);")

Another example of XSS issues determined by user input is public overridden methods.

Java

@Override
public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
  if (url.substring(0,6).equalsIgnoreCase("yourscheme:")) {
    // parse the URL object and execute functions
  }
}

Kotlin

    fun shouldOverrideUrlLoading(view: WebView, url: String): Boolean {
        if (url.substring(0, 6).equals("yourscheme:", ignoreCase = true)) {
            // parse the URL object and execute functions
        }
    }

Sergey Bobrov was able to take advantage of this in the following HackerOne report. Any input to the HTML parameter would be trusted in Quora’s ActionBarContentActivity. Payloads were successful using adb, clipboard data via ModalContentActivity, and Intents from 3rd party applications.

  • ADB

bash $ adb shell $ am start -n com.quora.android/com.quora.android.ActionBarContentActivity \ -e url 'http://test/test' -e html 'XSS<script>alert(123)</script>'

  • Clipboard Data

bash $ am start -n com.quora.android/com.quora.android.ModalContentActivity \ -e url 'http://test/test' -e html \ '<script>alert(QuoraAndroid.getClipboardData());</script>'

  • 3rd party Intent in Java or Kotlin:

java Intent i = new Intent(); i.setComponent(new ComponentName("com.quora.android", "com.quora.android.ActionBarContentActivity")); i.putExtra("url","http://test/test"); i.putExtra("html","XSS PoC <script>alert(123)</script>"); view.getContext().startActivity(i);

kotlin val i = Intent() i.component = ComponentName("com.quora.android", "com.quora.android.ActionBarContentActivity") i.putExtra("url", "http://test/test") i.putExtra("html", "XSS PoC <script>alert(123)</script>") view.context.startActivity(i)

If a WebView is used to display a remote website, the burden of escaping HTML shifts to the server side. If an XSS flaw exists on the web server, this can be used to execute script in the context of the WebView. As such, it is important to perform static analysis of the web application source code.

Verify that the following best practices have been followed:

  • No untrusted data is rendered in HTML, JavaScript or other interpreted contexts unless it is absolutely necessary.
  • Appropriate encoding is applied to escape characters, such as HTML entity encoding. Note: escaping rules become complicated when HTML is nested within other code, for example, rendering a URL located inside a JavaScript block.

Consider how data will be rendered in a response. For example, if data is rendered in a HTML context, six control characters that must be escaped:

CharacterEscaped
&&amp;
<&lt;
>&gt;
“&quot;
‘&#x27;
/&#x2F;

For a comprehensive list of escaping rules and other prevention measures, refer to the OWASP XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet.

Dynamic Analysis - Security Testing Considerations

XSS issues can be best detected using manual and/or automated input fuzzing, i.e. injecting HTML tags and special characters into all available input fields to verify the web application denies invalid inputs or escapes the HTML meta-characters in its output.

A reflected XSS attack refers to an exploit where malicious code is injected via a malicious link. To test for these attacks, automated input fuzzing is considered to be an effective method. For example, the BURP Scanner is highly effective in identifying reflected XSS vulnerabilities. As always with automated analysis, ensure all input vectors are covered with a manual review of testing parameters.

Memory Corruption Bugs

Memory corruption bugs are a popular mainstay with hackers. This class of bug results from a programming error that causes the program to access an unintended memory location. Under the right conditions, attackers can capitalize on this behavior to hijack the execution flow of the vulnerable program and execute arbitrary code. This kind of vulnerability occurs in a number of ways:

  • Buffer overflows: This describes a programming error where an app writes beyond an allocated memory range for a particular operation. An attacker can use this flaw to overwrite important control data located in adjacent memory, such as function pointers. Buffer overflows were formerly the most common type of memory corruption flaw, but have become less prevalent over the years due to a number of factors. Notably, awareness among developers of the risks in using unsafe C library functions is now a common best practice plus, catching buffer overflow bugs is relatively simple. However, it is still worth testing for such defects.

  • Out-of-bounds-access: Buggy pointer arithmetic may cause a pointer or index to reference a position beyond the bounds of the intended memory structure (e.g. buffer or list). When an app attempts to write to an out-of-bounds address, a crash or unintended behavior occurs. If the attacker can control the target offset and manipulate the content written to some extent, code execution exploit is likely possible.

  • Dangling pointers: These occur when an object with an incoming reference to a memory location is deleted or deallocated, but the object pointer is not reset. If the program later uses the dangling pointer to call a virtual function of the already deallocated object, it is possible to hijack execution by overwriting the original vtable pointer. Alternatively, it is possible to read or write object variables or other memory structures referenced by a dangling pointer.

  • Use-after-free: This refers to a special case of dangling pointers referencing released (deallocated) memory. After a memory address is cleared, all pointers referencing the location become invalid, causing the memory manager to return the address to a pool of available memory. When this memory location is eventually re-allocated, accessing the original pointer will read or write the data contained in the newly allocated memory. This usually leads to data corruption and undefined behavior, but crafty attackers can set up the appropriate memory locations to leverage control of the instruction pointer.

  • Integer overflows: When the result of an arithmetic operation exceeds the maximum value for the integer type defined by the programmer, this results in the value “wrapping around” the maximum integer value, inevitably resulting in a small value being stored. Conversely, when the result of an arithmetic operation is smaller than the minimum value of the integer type, an integer underflow occurs where the result is larger than expected. Whether a particular integer overflow/underflow bug is exploitable depends on how the integer is used. For example, if the integer type were to represent the length of a buffer, this could create a buffer overflow vulnerability.

  • Format string vulnerabilities: When unchecked user input is passed to the format string parameter of the printf family of C functions, attackers may inject format tokens such as ‘%c’ and ‘%n’ to access memory. Format string bugs are convenient to exploit due to their flexibility. Should a program output the result of the string formatting operation, the attacker can read and write to memory arbitrarily, thus bypassing protection features such as ASLR.

The primary goal in exploiting memory corruption is usually to redirect program flow into a location where the attacker has placed assembled machine instructions referred to as shellcode. On iOS, the data execution prevention feature (as the name implies) prevents execution from memory defined as data segments. To bypass this protection, attackers leverage return-oriented programming (ROP). This process involves chaining together small, pre-existing code chunks (“gadgets”) in the text segment where these gadgets may execute a function useful to the attacker or, call mprotect to change memory protection settings for the location where the attacker stored the shellcode.

Android apps are, for the most part, implemented in Java which is inherently safe from memory corruption issues by design. However, native apps utilizing JNI libraries are susceptible to this kind of bug. In rare cases, Android apps that use XML/JSON parsers to unwrap Java objects are also subject to memory corruption bugs. An example of such vulnerability was found in the PayPal app.

Similarly, iOS apps can wrap C/C++ calls in Obj-C or Swift, making them susceptible to these kind of attacks.

Example:

The following code snippet shows a simple example for a condition resulting in a buffer overflow vulnerability.

 void copyData(char *userId) {  
    char  smallBuffer[10]; // size of 10  
    strcpy(smallBuffer, userId);
 }

To identify potential buffer overflows, look for uses of unsafe string functions (strcpy, strcat, other functions beginning with the “str” prefix, etc.) and potentially vulnerable programming constructs, such as copying user input into a limited-size buffer. The following should be considered red flags for unsafe string functions:

  • strcat
  • strcpy
  • strncat
  • strlcat
  • strncpy
  • strlcpy
  • sprintf
  • snprintf
  • gets

Also, look for instances of copy operations implemented as “for” or “while” loops and verify length checks are performed correctly.

Verify that the following best practices have been followed:

  • When using integer variables for array indexing, buffer length calculations, or any other security-critical operation, verify that unsigned integer types are used and perform precondition tests are performed to prevent the possibility of integer wrapping.
  • The app does not use unsafe string functions such as strcpy, most other functions beginning with the “str” prefix, sprint, vsprintf, gets, etc.;
  • If the app contains C++ code, ANSI C++ string classes are used;
  • In case of memcpy, make sure you check that the target buffer is at least of equal size as the source and that both buffers are not overlapping.
  • iOS apps written in Objective-C use NSString class. C apps on iOS should use CFString, the Core Foundation representation of a string.
  • No untrusted data is concatenated into format strings.

Static Analysis Security Testing Considerations

Static code analysis of low-level code is a complex topic that could easily fill its own book. Automated tools such as RATS combined with limited manual inspection efforts are usually sufficient to identify low-hanging fruits. However, memory corruption conditions often stem from complex causes. For example, a use-after-free bug may actually be the result of an intricate, counter-intuitive race condition not immediately apparent. Bugs manifesting from deep instances of overlooked code deficiencies are generally discovered through dynamic analysis or by testers who invest time to gain a deep understanding of the program.

Dynamic Analysis Security Testing Considerations

Memory corruption bugs are best discovered via input fuzzing: an automated black-box software testing technique in which malformed data is continually sent to an app to survey for potential vulnerability conditions. During this process, the application is monitored for malfunctions and crashes. Should a crash occur, the hope (at least for security testers) is that the conditions creating the crash reveal an exploitable security flaw.

Fuzz testing techniques or scripts (often called “fuzzers”) will typically generate multiple instances of structured input in a semi-correct fashion. Essentially, the values or arguments generated are at least partially accepted by the target application, yet also contain invalid elements, potentially triggering input processing flaws and unexpected program behaviors. A good fuzzer exposes a substantial amount of possible program execution paths (i.e. high coverage output). Inputs are either generated from scratch (“generation-based”) or derived from mutating known, valid input data (“mutation-based”).

For more information on fuzzing, refer to the OWASP Fuzzing Guide.

Binary Protection Mechanisms

Position Independent Code

PIC (Position Independent Code) is code that, being placed somewhere in the primary memory, executes properly regardless of its absolute address. PIC is commonly used for shared libraries, so that the same library code can be loaded in a location in each program address space where it does not overlap with other memory in use (for example, other shared libraries).

PIE (Position Independent Executable) are executable binaries made entirely from PIC. PIE binaries are used to enable ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) which randomly arranges the address space positions of key data areas of a process, including the base of the executable and the positions of the stack, heap and libraries.

Memory Management

Automatic Reference Counting

ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) is a memory management feature of the Clang compiler exclusive to Objective-C and Swift. ARC automatically frees up the memory used by class instances when those instances are no longer needed. ARC differs from tracing garbage collection in that there is no background process that deallocates the objects asynchronously at runtime.

Unlike tracing garbage collection, ARC does not handle reference cycles automatically. This means that as long as there are “strong” references to an object, it will not be deallocated. Strong cross-references can accordingly create deadlocks and memory leaks. It is up to the developer to break cycles by using weak references. You can learn more about how it differs from Garbage Collection here.

Garbage Collection

Garbage Collection (GC) is an automatic memory management feature of some languages such as Java/Kotlin/Dart. The garbage collector attempts to reclaim memory which was allocated by the program, but is no longer referenced—also called garbage. The Android runtime (ART) makes use of an improved version of GC. You can learn more about how it differs from ARC here.

Manual Memory Management

Manual memory management is typically required in native libraries written in C/C++ where ARC and GC do not apply. The developer is responsible for doing proper memory management. Manual memory management is known to enable several major classes of bugs into a program when used incorrectly, notably violations of memory safety or memory leaks.

More information can be found in “Memory Corruption Bugs”.

Stack Smashing Protection

Stack canaries help prevent stack buffer overflow attacks by storing a hidden integer value on the stack right before the return pointer. This value is then validated before the return statement of the function is executed. A buffer overflow attack often overwrites a region of memory in order to overwrite the return pointer and take over the program flow. If stack canaries are enabled, they will be overwritten as well and the CPU will know that the memory has been tampered with.

Stack buffer overflow is a type of the more general programming vulnerability known as buffer overflow (or buffer overrun). Overfilling a buffer on the stack is more likely to derail program execution than overfilling a buffer on the heap because the stack contains the return addresses for all active function calls.