Ninety-two percent of the Top 100 paid Apple iOS apps and 100 percent of Top 100 paid Android apps have been hacked, according to new research contained in the State of Security in the App Economy: Mobile Apps under Attack report.

The report, which reveals the widespread prevalence of “cracked” mobile apps and the financial impact befalling the multi-billion dollar App Economy due to compromised brands, lost revenues, intellectual property (IP) theft, and piracy, was released today byArxan Technologies.

The proliferation of mobile devices has created an app-centric global marketplace, ushering in the App Economy that is driving new business models and revenue streams across all industries.

In its State of Security in the App Economy report, 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.

“We envision a thriving App Economy with freedom and confidence to innovate and distribute new apps. However, this potential is being threatened by hackers, and most enterprises, security teams, and app developers are not prepared for these attacks,” said Jukka Alanen, vice president at Arxan and the lead author of the new study.

“The integrity of mobile apps can be easily compromised through new tampering/reverse-engineering attack vectors. The traditional approaches to application security such as secure software development practices and vulnerability scanning cannot address the new hacking patterns that we identified. The findings call for new approaches for mobile app owners to build protections directly inside their apps to withstand these new attacks.”

Key findings of the report reveal:

• 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).

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• Vast majority of apps can access sensitive consumer information
• Nearly half of mobile app users click on ads by mistake
• When do most smartphone users access apps? When do they engage with mobile ads?
• Movie, book, game, productivity lead mobile app searches

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Tags: Android, Apple iOS, Arxan Technologies, mobile apps hacked, Report, State of Security in the App Economy: Mobile Apps under Attack