Applying Security Assurance Techniques to a Mobile Phone Application: An Initial Approach

As users download applications to their mobile phones, security is a critical issue. In this paper we present a process for the security assurance of applications. It uses existing vulnerability databases and application development guidelines to identify potential security issues. The identified issues are then validated using a variety of techniques including black-box testing, unit testing code inspection and static analysis. This process is illustrated using an application for the Android platform.