Mobile application security testing finds flaws in your app and its SDKs before release. Learn MAST methods, iOS/Android risks, and tool criteria.
TL;DR
- Mobile application security testing finds flaws in app code, bundled SDKs, and runtime behavior before a build ships.
- A released app is a binary anyone can download and analyze, so a hardcoded key in it is effectively public.
- Static, dynamic, and dependency analysis should run on every build, not one penetration test before launch.
Answer capsule
What is mobile application security testing?
Mobile application security testing (MAST) is the practice of finding and fixing vulnerabilities in your iOS or Android app before release. In a 2026 survey, 86% of engineering leaders and practitioners said security checks need more automation.
• SAST scans source and binaries
• SCA checks the third-party SDKs and libraries your build declares
• DAST observes the running app
Quick facts: mobile application security testing
Download a published app, run it through a free decompiler, and you can be reading its code by the afternoon. In a careless build, a live API key sits there in plain text. Bundled next to it is an ad SDK nobody has updated in over a year carrying a known vulnerability.
Nobody broke in. The app shipped that way.
The sections below define mobile application security testing (MAST), walk through the methods teams use to probe an app for weaknesses, list the iOS and Android risks that turn up most often, and set out criteria for judging a testing tool.
The focus is finding and fixing that risk before a build reaches an app store, not after someone else finds it first.
What is mobile application security testing (MAST)?
MAST, short for mobile application security testing, is the discipline of locating and repairing security flaws in three places: the code your team writes, the SDKs and libraries bundled with it, and the way the app behaves once it runs on an iPhone or Android device. The goal is to catch each flaw before it lands in a build users can install.
It covers three areas:
- Static analysis of the source code or the compiled binary.
- Dynamic testing while the app runs on a device or emulator.
- Review of local data storage and of every network connection the app opens.
The difference from web testing is where the code ends up. A web app keeps its sensitive logic on a server you control, even though the browser receives some client-side code. A mobile app ships much more of that logic to the user's phone, where an attacker can decompile or analyze it. So MAST also covers reverse-engineering resistance and platform-specific storage and crypto.
MAST is the mobile branch of application security testing (AST), with the OWASP MASVS as its reference standard. Most of it runs on every build, with manual pentests added on a schedule.
How do I test a mobile app for security vulnerabilities?
Mobile app security testing works best as a mix of methods, since each one sees a different slice of the risk: the compiled binary, the APIs behind it, or the app's behavior on actual hardware. The OWASP MASTG documents test cases for each one.
None of these is a one-time checklist. Mature programs run several of them continuously, each at a different pipeline stage: static checks on every commit, dynamic checks before release, pentests on a schedule.
What are common mobile app security risks on iOS and Android?
The OWASP Mobile Top 10, last updated in 2024, is the standard catalog for both platforms. Most entries share a root cause with web risks: credentials or data handled carelessly. Here it happens inside a binary that sits on a device the user controls.
Worth knowing: OWASP rates improper credential usage as easy to exploit and easy to detect. It rates supply chain weaknesses as difficult to detect. Automated scanning gives you a good chance of finding a leaked key before an attacker does. A weak SDK rarely turns up in a review of your own code.
The platforms differ in the details. On iOS, the recurring problems are Keychain misuse and exceptions to App Transport Security. On Android, they are Keystore misuse, exported components, and permissions the app never uses.
What are the best mobile application security testing tools?
Strong mobile application security testing tools pair static and dynamic analysis with software composition analysis of embedded SDKs. They also tie findings from the code, the dependencies, and the binary together.
So skip the rankings. Whatever shortlist you start from, check each tool against five criteria:
- Coverage across the binary and its dependencies. SAST for your own code, and SCA for every SDK bundled alongside it.
- Reachability-based prioritization. The tool should flag what is actually exploitable in the shipped build, not everything technically present in a library.
- Pipeline-native operation. Scans run on every build inside the mobile CI/CD pipeline, not as a manual step before app store submission.
- Correlation across scanners. Results from SAST, SCA, and pentesting merge into one deduplicated list, so nobody teams spend less time matching findings across multiple reports.
- Supply chain visibility. A software bill of materials (SBOM) that lists third-party SDKs the app ships with. Ask whether it also captures precompiled SDKs added outside a package manager, since that is where much of the mobile-specific risk lives.
How do you build mobile app security testing into the pipeline?
Mobile app security testing pays off most when it shifts left, the same lesson web teams already learned. Run the checks early and a vulnerability shows up as a failed pipeline step, before it can become an app store rejection or an incident after launch.
You probably own most of the scanners already. The work is moving each check to the right stage and connecting the output:
- Every commit. Run SAST and SCA against the app's code and its bundled SDKs.
- Every build. Before signing, inspect the compiled binary for embedded secrets and weak cryptography.
- Before release. Exercise the running app on physical hardware or an emulator, and confirm it stands up to reverse engineering.
- One view. Findings from every scanner land in one deduplicated list, so teams spend less time triaging the same issue twice.
By the numbers: 86% of engineering leaders and practitioners say security and compliance checks need to be more automated to meet delivery timelines.
How Harness approaches mobile app risk before production
The challenge
The earlier a vulnerability in a mobile app's code or dependencies surfaces, the cheaper it is to fix. Most teams know that. The trouble is volume: Every mobile build carries SDKs nobody on the team wrote, and as AI coding tools speed up development, 48% of organizations say they worry about more vulnerabilities reaching production.
The approach
The Harness Security Testing Agent runs inside the pipeline that builds and ships the app, and groups its work by the problem it solves.
Find risk in code and dependencies. SAST traces data flow and control flow through the app's source, while SCA scans direct and transitive dependencies, including bundled SDKs. SCA reachability analysis flags the vulnerable open source functions your code actually calls. OWASP rates supply chain weaknesses as difficult to detect, so dependency analysis earns its place in mobile testing.
Correlate every scanner in one view. Security Testing Orchestration pulls in Harness scanners plus more than 40 pre-built integrations, then deduplicates and normalizes the results. Teams spend far less time reconciling a SAST report against a pentest report by hand.
Prove what shipped is what was scanned. Supply Chain Security generates an SBOM on every build and signs attestations linking each artifact to the code and pipeline that built it.
The outcome
Every check runs in the same pipeline that already builds your iOS and Android apps. A failed scan can block a bad release that has a known problem before it goes live.
How two financial services teams moved security checks into the pipeline
Neither case study is specific to mobile apps. Both show what changes when security and compliance checks move into the pipeline that ships the software.
How did Gentera consolidate nearly 600 pipelines with four golden templates?
Gentera serves more than 6.7 million clients across Mexico and Peru. Its DevOps environment was fragmented across nearly 600 pipelines and disconnected tools, which slowed releases and made governance hard to enforce. Harness brought that down to about 200 pipelines built on four golden templates, with automated, governed release pipelines.
"Now we're able to work from standardized pipelines, and our security checks happen automatically instead of stopping teams to ask for approval. That foundation is what lets us move faster for the people we serve."
- Brando Hernandez Zazueta, CTO, Gentera
Source: Gentera Delivers Credit Faster for Underserved Communities
How did Trust Bank cut deployment lead time from two weeks to 24 hours?
At Trust Bank, the first of Singapore's new wave of digital banks, a simple code change could wait up to two weeks for manual compliance, risk, and security checks. Automating them in the pipeline brought deployment lead time down to 24 hours.
"Speed and agility are critical to us, but so is maintaining the trust we've built with our customers. We needed to find a way to keep delivering updates quickly while ensuring everything met the necessary security and compliance standards."
- Srinivas Patil, Chief Technology Officer, Trust Bank
Source: TrustBank accelerates digital banking with Harness and AWS
What this means for your mobile app
The question to ask is not whether someone pentested the app before submission. It is whether every build gets checked automatically, and whether you would catch a compromised SDK before it ships inside your app.
If the answer is no, start with the cheapest gap: SAST and SCA on every commit, with the bundled SDKs in scope. The rest of the program builds on that.
See how Harness finds and fixes vulnerabilities in your mobile app's code, dependencies, and SDKs before they ever ship. Explore Harness Application Security Testing.
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