More than 90 Percent of the Top 100 Mobile Apps Have Been Hacked [Infographic]

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Posted August 20, 2012 at 6:43pm by iClarified

An Arxan report entitled, 'The State of Security in the App Economy: Mobile Apps Under Attack' finds that 90% of the top 100 mobile apps have been hacked.

Arxan set out to analyze the extent of malicious mobile app hacking by researching hacked versions of top Apple iOS and Android apps from third-party sites outside of the Apple App Store and Google Play marketplaces. The sample of 230 top apps included the top 100 paid Apple iOS and top 100 paid Android apps as well as 15 highly popular free apps for iOS and the same 15 free apps for Android.

Key Findings:
● More than 90% of top 100 paid mobile apps have been hacked: 92% of top paid iOS apps and 100% of top paid Android apps were found to have been hacked.
● Free apps are not immune from hackers: 40% of popular free iOS apps and 80 percent of the same Android apps were found to have been hacked.
● Hacking is pervasive across all categories of mobile apps: Hacked versions of mobile apps were found across all key industries such as games, business, productivity, financial services, social networking, entertainment, communication, and healthcare.
● Mobile apps are subject to many diverse types of hacks and tampering attacks, such as disabled or circumvented security, unlocked or modified features, free pirated copies, ad-removed versions, source code/IP theft, and illegal malware-infested versions.
● The Anatomy of an App Hack entails three steps: Define the exploit and attack targets; reverse-engineer the code; and tamper with the code; this process is made easy with widely available free or low-cost hacking tools.
● Financial risks from hacking are increasing rapidly: Mobile app hacking is becoming a major economic issue with consumer and enterprise mobile app revenues growing to more than $6o billion by 2016 and mobile payments volume exceeding $1 trillion (based on data from KPMG, ABI Research, and TechNavio).

You can find the full report at the link below or check out the infographic.

Read More [via AppAdvice]

More than 90 Percent of the Top 100 Mobile Apps Have Been Hacked [Infographic]

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Fahad - October 13, 2012 at 8:36am

Thank's.

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JEWISH WOMAN - August 21, 2012 at 12:33am

@SIMON. My friend can you please refrain from using such vulgar language. If you notice you will see that only a few are as nasty as you. Most here are nice people But you Simon should behave yourself also because there are young children here also please Simon stop

NoGoodNick - August 20, 2012 at 9:58pm

While it doesn't make sense to steal a 99 cent app, when some cost $20 or so, it makes sense to make sure it works as described, or that you can use it. Most apps I download are never used, it's easier to see if I'll ever use them before I fork over money for them. On the other hand, many app makers are the victims of their own flawed business models. Most people don't like being reminded they're playing a "Free" app by being blanketed with ads all the time, while other "hacks" extend the functionality of existing apps.

Simon - August 20, 2012 at 7:06pm

What? I don't have installous. I swear! Nope, not me :-)