13 Mobile App Security Testing Tools Hackers Use [Updated]

Are you looking for mobile app security testing tools to pentest your app?

With the increase in use of smartphones, delivering a secure high performance mobile application is key to user retention.

And with the recent data protection laws, it’s also important for users to know when you are collecting any data about them and why. Through mobile application pentesting you’ll ensure there are no loopholes in your app that may cause data loss.

In this article we are going to look at the mobile app security testing tools for pentesting mobile apps.

These mobile app pentesting tools will enable you identify any flaws that may enable an external attacker access any private data that is stored on the mobile device. With mobile apps becoming more sophisticated these days, more information gets stored in mobile devices.

The leakage of this information could cause damage to the devices and users. So mobile app penetration testing should be a priority when developing an app. If you are a mobile app developer but new to penetration testing, here are the best online penetration testing courses to get you started today.

While performing mobile application penetration testing, you’ll look into authentication, authorization, session management among others.

I hope that these mobile app security testing tools will help you security test both your iOS and Android apps before publishing them.

Let’s get started with the mobile apps testing tools.

1. ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy)

OWASP ZAP is a free automated mobile app penetration testing tool that is used to find vulnerabilities in mobile applications. It is an open-source project that is managed by a community of mobile app security professionals and researchers.

ZAP assesses the security of a mobile app by sending malicious messages.

It works by sending requests or files through malicious messages to test whether the target mobile app is vulnerable to the message. Apart from being available is 20 different languages, it is also very easy to install which makes it easy for beginners to get started with.

You can use it for both manual and automated mobile app security testing.

2. QARK

QARK, which stands for Quick Android Review Kit, is a popular Android app pentesting tool for assessing the security of an Android application. It is a free and open source Android security auditing tool developed by LinkedIn.

Through this Android security testing tool, you’ll be able to perform static code analysis of source code or an existing .apk file. After running a security check, it generates a report with potential security vulnerabilities as well as ways to fix them.

It can also highlight security issues related to particular Android operating systems. QARK is a must have tool if you are serious about a career in mobile application penetration testing.

3. Drozer

Drozer is an open source mobile app security testing tool developer by MWR InfoSecurity. It is able to identify security vulnerabilities in mobile applications to ensure that Android apps are safe to use.

By automating the time consuming repeated stuff, this tool makes identifying Android app security vulnerabilities fast and snappy. Because Drozer supports both Android devices and emulators, it’s able to execute Java code on the Android device itself.

This means you can assume the role of an Android app and communicate with other apps on the device through Android’s internal process communication mechanism. It only supports mobile app pentesting on Android devices.

4. MobSF

MobSF, which stands for Mobile Security Framework, is another very popular open source automated mobile app security testing framework. It’s is popular partly because it’s multi-platform and can be used for testing iOS, Android and Windows mobile apps.

This mobile app pentesting tool is able to perform static code analysis, dynamic analysis and web API testing.

It can be used to perform quick security testing of Android and iOS apps because it supports both IPA and APK binaries as well as zipped source code. Apart from being easy to install, it can be hosted in a local environment so that no sensitive data interacts with the cloud. In fact developers can use it to identify security vulnerabilities during development.

5. Android Debug Bridge

Android Debug Bridge is a popular command-line tool for performing mobile app testing on Android devices.

It is able to communicate with the actual connected Android device or emulator to assess the security posture of the installed apps. ADB offers a terminal interface for controlling the Android device connected to a computer through USB.

This Android security testing tool offers many functionalities including the ability to install and uninstall apps, run shell commands, reboot, transfer files among others. In fact, you can integrate ADB with the popular Android Studio IDE.

It can also run as a client-server tool by connecting to multiple Android devices and emulator instances.

6. WhiteHat Security

WhiteHat Sentinel Mobile Express is a mobile apps security testing tool provided by WhiteHat Security. It is a cloud based platform that offers both dynamic and static analysis of mobile application source code.

Because it is multi-platform, it can perform mobile app security testing for both Android and iOS devices. It can very easily detect security loopholes because testing is done by installing the mobile app on the actual device instead of an emulator.

The Sentinel platform provides you with a clear and concise description of the security vulnerabilities in your application along with possible solutions. You can also integrate Sentinel with CI servers and bug tracking tools.

7. MAST by Veracode

MAST, which stands for Mobile Application Security Testing, is an automated, cloud based mobile apps security solution provided by Veracode. Veracode is a software based company that provide services for mobile app and web application security testing.

MAST is able to identify security flaws in a mobile application and suggest solutions for fixing them.

It is able to deliver very accurate testing results because security testing is performed on the mobile app. You can also perform a quick static analysis to get an accurate review of your application code. So MAST is a three in one solution that offers you multiple security analysis features including static, dynamic and behavioral mobile app analysis.

8. Kiuwan

Kiuwan provides a 360 degree approach to mobile application penetration testing with high technology coverage. It provides automated mobile app pentesting of static code analysis and software composition analysis. Kiuwan supports the main languages and development frameworks. 

9. Devknox

Devknox is an Android security testing tool that checks for simple Android app security issues and gives you real time suggestions to fix them on the go.

This Android pentesting plugin for Android Studio enables you to detect and resolve security issues while writing your code. Think if it like an autocorrect mobile app security tool that keeps your Android app security requirements at par with global security standards.

10. iMas

iMas is a free and open source mobile application penetration testing tool that is use for security testing an iOS application.

Check my other iOS pentesting tools article for a complete list of other tools for security testing and reversing your iPhone applications. It helps you to encrypt your application data, prompt for passwords, prevent application tampering while enforcing enterprise policies on iOS apps.

iMas helps you protect your iOS app from jailbreaks, secure sensitive information in memory and mitigate against binary patching.

11. Fortify by Micro Focus

Fortify is a mobile application security tool developed by Micro Focus, that helps secure mobile applications before they are installed on a mobile device. It is multi-platform and therefore supports the most popular mobile platforms like Android, iOS, Windows and Blackberry.

Fortify assess application security by performing static source code analysis and identifying security flaws.

12. Codified Security

Codified Security is one of the most popular automated mobile app security tools for performing mobile application security testing. It identifies and suggest remedies to security vulnerabilities in your mobile applications to that they are secure to use by the public.

Because it follows a pragmatic approach to mobile app security testing, the mobile pentest results are scalable and reliable.

Using machine learning techniques, it’s capable of performing thorough static source code analysis and dynamic testing of mobile applications.

13. IBM Application Security on Cloud

IBM Application Security on Cloud is a mobile app security testing tool developed by IBM for securing mobile applications. It is, however, also used for securing web applications by checking for the most pervasive published security vulnerabilities.

This tool can import both APK and IPA files, scan the source code for security flaws and provide a report on the security vulnerabilities detected. These reports not only detail how these loopholes can be exploited by a malicious hacker, but also provide suggestions on how to fix them immediately.

So your Android and iOS apps will be free of security vulnerabilities before they are deployed or pushed to production.

Conclusion

With proper mobile app penetration testing, most vulnerabilities can be detected and remedied in time.

By using these mobile app security testing tools you’ll be able to find and close these loopholes both through automated and manual testing. Pentesting your mobile apps will help prevent security breaches by stopping fraud attacks and malware infections. Mobile app security testing can sometime appear hard because mobile apps are targeted for different platforms.

So these mobile pentesting tools will enable you test for the most common platforms like iOS, Android, Windows etc…

But if you want specific tools for testing iOS apps then check my other article on iOS pentesting tools for reverse engineering. Mobile apps have become such a critical part of our daily lives today. The connection between smartphone users and mobile apps is getting stronger each day because almost all daily activities have a mobile app for it.

From communication, leisure, travel, healthcare etc… This means there has never been a better time to take mobile apps privacy and security seriously.

I hope these mobile app security testing tools help you pentest your mobile apps through threat monitoring and malware analysis. Have you used any of these mobile apps security testing tools before? Please share your experience in the comments below.