Mobile Software Assurance Informed through Knowledge Graph Construction: The OWASP Threat of Insecure Data Storage

Suzanna Schmeelk; Lixin Tao

doi:10.30564/jcsr.v2i2.1765

Mobile Software Assurance Informed through Knowledge Graph Construction: The OWASP Threat of Insecure Data Storage

Suzanna Schmeelk (St. John's University, United States)
Lixin Tao (Pace University, United States)

Abstract

Many organizations, to save costs, are moving to the Bring Your Own Mobile Device (BYOD) model and adopting applications built by third-parties at an unprecedented rate. Our research examines software assurance methodologies specifically focusing on security analysis coverage of the program analysis for mobile malware detection, mitigation, and prevention. This research focuses on secure software development of Android applications by developing knowledge graphs for threats reported by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). OWASP maintains lists of the top ten security threats to web and mobile applications. We develop knowledge graphs based on the two most recent top ten threat years and show how the knowledge graph relationships can be discovered in mobile application source code. We analyze 200+ healthcare applications from GitHub to gain an understanding of their software assurance of their developed software for one of the OWASP top ten mobile threats, the threat of “Insecure Data Storage.” We find that many of the applications are storing personally identifying information (PII) in potentially vulnerable places leaving users exposed to higher risks for the loss of their sensitive data.

Keywords

Cybersecurity;Secure software development;Penetration testing;Risk assessment

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.30564/jcsr.v2i2.1765

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