Secure Coding Guidelines for Mobile Applications

Many companies constantly use mobile applications, so students actively study development in this area. To actively develop, businesses take professional developers into their teams who introduce innovations to always present their products at their best.

Because companies’ development speed is lightning fast and developers require constant innovation, sometimes security fades into the background. Students who study cybersecurity protocols clearly understand how important it is to monitor all aspects of the functioning of applications. In this article, we have collected tips from experts in the mobile development industry.

List of Mobile App Coding Best Practices

Secure coding guidelines for mobile applications are a set of practices and principles. These efforts aim to ensure mobile application security at the development and operational stages. These guidelines help developers protect user data, prevent information leaks, and reduce the risk of application hacking.

It can be difficult for students to cope with such tasks and say, “Do my coding homework” online. Professional programmers efficiently complete any task and have extensive knowledge of mobile application development. With us, you will learn how to cope with the task yourself, and the main aspects of these recommendations include the following points:

Implement POST to send sensitive data

The HTTP POST method is better for transmitting sensitive data because it does not include it in the URL. This contrasts with GET, which conveys important information as part of the URL. It makes information visible in server logs, browser history, or caches, while POST hides the data from prying eyes.

Additionally, using GET to send sensitive information makes customer data vulnerable to being altered by an eavesdropping attack. This creates an additional security risk, especially when third parties send links with malicious GET requests to end users. Sending links that initiate a POST request via email is quite tricky. On the contrary, links use GET requests to spread malicious data.

Use HTTPS for development

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure  (HTTPS) is the most reliable and secure internet access method. It combines two different protocols: the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the SSL or TLS protocols. HTTPS also ensures that client requests are sent to the server securely. Data exchange is entirely encrypted, preventing interception and allowing you to maintain the confidentiality of requests.

HTTPS encryption protects against hacker attacks by hiding the contents of traffic from anyone who does not have the key to decrypt it. The traffic remains available for analysis but appears as a stream of random bytes rather than JSON text, HTML, links, cookies, or passwords. Developers are, therefore, advised to avoid using HTTP URLs in their mobile applications.

Separate channels for transmitting confidential data

Reliable mobile security should be independent of one communication channel. Experts recommend using multiple communication channels to securely exchange sensitive information, such as PINs or passwords. Of course, storing a password offline is not always possible, especially during interactions in large companies or when automatically logging into an application.

For example, you can use a secure HTTPS network connection to transfer encrypted data between the client and server. APNS, GCM, and SMS often give users a PIN or token. This way, the system’s overall security remains protected even if one data link is compromised.

Consider only genuine SSL certificates

An SSL certificate from a trusted provider verifies the authenticity of the application. Otherwise, anyone can create a fake certificate for a site, thebank.com, and impersonate them. Therefore, your HTTPS connection should reject any SSL certificates that are invalid for any reason.