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arXiv · 2108.07188

Security Smells Pervade Mobile App Servers

Pascal Gadient·Marc-Andrea Tarnutzer·Oscar Nierstrasz·Mohammad Ghafari
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Abstract

[Background] Web communication is universal in cyberspace, and security risks in this domain are devastating. [Aims] We analyzed the prevalence of six security smells in mobile app servers, and we investigated the consequence of these smells from a security perspective. [Method] We used an existing dataset that includes 9714 distinct URLs used in 3376 Android mobile apps. We exercised these URLs twice within 14 months and investigated the HTTP headers and bodies. [Results] We found that more than 69% of tested apps suffer from three kinds of security smells, and that unprotected communication and misconfigurations are very common in servers. Moreover, source-code and version leaks, or the lack of update policies expose app servers to security risks. [Conclusions] Poor app server maintenance greatly hampers security.

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Pascal Gadient, Marc-Andrea Tarnutzer, Oscar Nierstrasz, Mohammad Ghafari. 2021-08-16. Security Smells Pervade Mobile App Servers. https://doi.org/10.1145/3475716.3475780

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