A Study on the Vulnerabilities of Mobile Apps associated with Software Modules
This research addresses mobile app security vulnerabilities for developers and stakeholders in app distribution ecosystems, though it is incremental as it builds on existing studies of software libraries.
The study analyzed 30,000 free and paid Android apps to understand how vulnerabilities are linked to software libraries, finding that approximately 70% of vulnerabilities in free apps and 50% in paid apps stem from third-party libraries, with more expensive or popular paid apps tending to have more vulnerabilities due to increased functionality.
This paper reports a large-scale study that aims to understand how mobile application (app) vulnerabilities are associated with software libraries. We analyze both free and paid apps. Studying paid apps was quite meaningful because it helped us understand how differences in app development/maintenance affect the vulnerabilities associated with libraries. We analyzed 30k free and paid apps collected from the official Android marketplace. Our extensive analyses revealed that approximately 70%/50% of vulnerabilities of free/paid apps stem from software libraries, particularly from third-party libraries. Somewhat paradoxically, we found that more expensive/popular paid apps tend to have more vulnerabilities. This comes from the fact that more expensive/popular paid apps tend to have more functionality, i.e., more code and libraries, which increases the probability of vulnerabilities. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions to stakeholders of mobile app distribution ecosystems.