Peril in a Pandemic: The State of Mobile Application Security

The Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) analyzed more than 3,000 popular Android applications to assess the state of mobile app security during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study targeted the most downloaded and highest grossing apps across 18 categories, many of which have seen explosive growth during the pandemic. The research focused on three core areas of mobile app security:

• Vulnerabilities: The presence of known software vulnerabilities in the applications’ open source components
• Information leakage: Sensitive data such as private keys, tokens, and passwords exposed in the application code
• Mobile device permissions: Applications requiring excessive access to mobile device data and features