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Mobile Security Firms Strengthen Defenses as App Attacks Increase

In time to protect against the growing wave of data breaches that are occurring, as well as malware attacks and AI-powered robot attacks, a better mobile app will be available.

Security firm for mobile apps Appdome On January 23, the company released new technology to enhance its mobile app security. The new digital defense product will help protect against over 100 attack methods plaguing the online world.

MobileBot Defense is more than just another security tool. It offers a comprehensive solution to combat the sophisticated threats that are increasingly prevalent in the mobile channel. The key features include a strong defense against malware, fake apps, and weaponized apps.

App stores are flooded with deceptive apps that steal data from users by posing as legitimate applications.

The product also offers a powerful protection against bot attacks, credential stuffing and other methods that cybercriminals use to circumvent standard security measures. These attacks can result in massive data breaches that cause businesses to suffer financial and reputational damages.

This can also stop DDoS attacks, which can cause an entity to lose its online services. It can also prevent account takeovers, which can allow unauthorized users to access user accounts. Both can have serious implications for a business and its clients.

MobileBot Defense is now fully compatible with any web application firewall. Appdome says that these extensions can save mobile companies millions of dollars and extend the usefulness of existing WAF systems. They also reduce the cost for extending bot protection to the mobile channel.

Tom Tovar is the CEO and co-creator at Appdome. He said that most mobile brands have heterogeneous WAF settings or they are only looking to upgrade, change or add parts of their WAF.

By combining the no-code, SDK and server value propositions with full portability, brands can now extend bot defense on the mobile channel, without forklift upgrading the entire WAF system.

Bot attack on mobile apps

Mobile apps are more vulnerable to attacks than web applications, with a larger attack surface. The threats are also much more complex and varied. Additionally, mobile apps are at risk of being targeted by malicious bots, which is a worrying trend in the world of cybersecurity. Alan Bavosa Vice President of Security Products at Appdome says.

“There are thousands of unique attack vectors attackers exploit within the mobile channel, attacking the device, the mobile app, and the network — usually all at once,” he told TechNewsWorld.


These include device/OS threats such as rooting/jailbreaking, rootkits/root hiding/jailbreak and root detection bypass, emulators/simulators/virtualization tools, and kernel-based attacks. Bavosa added application threats including auto-clickers (code injection), overlay attacks, fake apps/clones and code-injection, to the list.

The growing number of bot attacks against mobile apps is a major concern. He warned that they posed serious threats to mobile apps, users and brands.

AI’s ability to mimic human behaviour and evade conventional security measures is a key factor in the sophistication and efficacy of these attacks. AI-powered robots can also adjust their strategies to match the evolving defense mechanism, making them harder to detect and combat”, Bavosa said.

AI-Enhanced Applications and Security Implications

In the current uncertain economic climate retailers are increasingly using mobile apps to boost business growth and maximize ROI. Lawrence Snapp CEO of AI powered app developer says that to be successful, retailers have to do more than develop a mobile app. Bryj.

Brands must meet the users’ increased expectations regarding mobile apps. “This includes hyper-personalizing the retail experience through AI, which can be used to create targeted product advertisements and tailored promotions for customers, based on past purchases, and utilizing AI platforms to improve app performance, discoverability and retail customer acquisition,” he said to TechNewsWorld.

Snapp said, “As the best and most affordable media channel for retailers, they will increasingly rely on native mobile applications to sustain business success by 2024.”

Mobile Security Platform Developer Zimperium In its Global Mobile Threat Report for 2023, Symantec reported a 51% rise in the number of mobile malware samples. This increase is due in large part to mobile devices becoming the primary endpoints for personal and business use, which makes them prime target for attackers.

“Banking trojans in particular provide an important ROI for attackers. Their proliferation has dramatically increased along with attackers’ use of novel techniques to avoid traditional detection approaches. Kern Smith, Zimperium Vice President of Pre-Sales Americas told TechNewsWorld: “Mobile devices will remain the primary endpoint for people in the coming year. We expect this trend to continue exponentially as the number of malware attacks continues to increase.”


The use of mobile ID technology can provide an alternative to traditional app security. Andrey Stanovnov, cofounder and CTO of IDScan.

“As businesses and individuals adopt mobile IDs, and the processes for verifying them, we might see a rise of fake physical identification documents which hope to sneak past increasingly common digital checks. Businesses must make sure that both their physical and digital systems can detect illegitimate credentials in any form, he said.

Better Bot Defense

Appdome Defense can be used with any web application firewall, regardless of whether it is hosted or cloud-based. Appdome’s Defense platform does not need a mobile app development kit, servers or a SDK. It also supports all mobile frameworks and languages.

Appdome released a real-time view of bot attacks with its ThreatScope Mobile XDR.

The new bot detection service and analytics allows mobile brands across WAF to measure, track and investigate threats and attacks, as well as report and respond. It offers SOC-class visibility on mobile bot attacks, threats, and attacks, with full drill-downs into attacks against specific apps and devices, OSs and releases.

TechNewsWorld reported that Chris Roeckl is the chief product officer of Appdome. He said: “Portability and Visibility offer a huge amount of financial advantages to brands with an installed mobile app base that’s significant or growing.”

He added that “other anti-bot products are siloed and force developers to use SDKs which only work with the vendor’s WAF.”

Appdome’s Bot Defense allows brands to preserve their WAF investment. It unifies visibility and response across WAFs. And it solves bot defence and WAF infrastructure independently, he said.

Rate Limiting Protection

Appdome’s security platform is unique. MobileBot Defense comes with a new rate-limiting functionality that blocks mobile DDoS at their source. Appdome Rate-Limiting allows mobile brands define thresholds to limit the number of attacks allowed on an endpoint during specific time intervals.

Bavosa stated that “one of the biggest challenges for mobile apps is their security, as mobile dev teams have evolved far beyond traditional security methods. This is especially true with the use automation in all areas.”


He observed that if you examine the toolchains used by Dev Teams within the typical CI/CD Pipeline, everything is automatized and all the tools work seamlessly together.

Bavosa explained that legacy security companies, which offer tools, products and services such as SDKs are manual, requiring a lot of work in coding, constant code updates and changes. That places extreme demand on the most resource-challenged organizations — mobile dev/engineering.

Appdome’s mobile cyber-defense tool is the industry’s only development tool. It allows customers to combine their app security requirements into a single platform that can be integrated with the existing CI/CD pipeline.

Multi-Vendor Compatibility

Bavosa claims that there are no other security solutions capable of multi-vendor bot defense on the mobile channel. For WAF solutions to work on mobile, the SDKs of each provider must be manually coded in.

A web application firewall SDK can only be used by one app. Assume you have a heterogeneous environment for WAFs, which is common in large enterprises. You will need to use two or more SDKs in this case. The SDKs won’t work together, as they will cause your mobile app to crash.

Appdome MobileBot Defense works with WAFs from multiple vendors. Bavosa concluded that this compatibility offers mobile brands huge operational and cost benefits.