Enterprise dynamics “Interview” make good use of appGuard from Gamania CloudForce to seize the mobile payment market with endless opportunities \n

Driven by the increasing shipments of smartphones, mobile games and e-commerce have become indispensable parts of the lives of many consumers, and this also drove the continual expansion of the mobile payment market. According to the latest research report from the Topology Research Institute, it is estimated that the scale of the global mobile payment market for 2017 will reach U.S. $780 billion dollars with an annual growth rate of 25.8%. After the Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan loosened the regulations, financial industries in Taiwan also began to actively invest in the development of different mobile payment services so that they can grab a favorable position when the Fintech era arrives. For example, before Apple Pay officially started to provide service in Taiwan, it had already won the cooperation of many bankers, hoping to grab a slice of the mobile payment market with endless business opportunities. However, there are many financial service Apps available on the market, and many loopholes with different risk levels exist; if they were intruded by hackers, great damage will be caused to enterprises and consumers. According to the mobile bank App test result released by Common Wealth Magazine for 20 of the major banks in Taiwan, it was discovered that the Apps of up to 17 banks have great information security risks, in which 11 Apps did not encrypt accounts and passwords. If hackers can successfully intrude into the mobile mechanism platform, they can easily acquire all accounts and passwords.

The general manager of Gamania CloudForce Paul Ding indicated that whether it was mobile payment Apps launched by Taiwan or foreign companies, they all had different levels of usage risks. In all fairness, reasons such as negligence in human development, loopholes of system platforms and even insufficient security thinking of developers during software development will more or less cause loopholes in the Apps. Therefore, whether these software loopholes can be found within the shortest time possible, and to allow consumers to enjoy safer mobile payment services are the key considerations when financial industries are developing Fintech services. The functions of appGuard can fully protect the security of Apps, and have been praised.

Even though developers have accidentally used the xCode tool that had Trojan horses embedded for the iOS system in the past, and resulted in many mobile devices being intruded by malicious programs, it is still a safer mobile operating system compared to the Android platform. The reason why Android devices became preliminary targets for the attacks of hacker organizations is mainly because the operating system adopts an open architecture; so, the stringency of the system is naturally poorer. Also, this platform system uses Java as the main language to develop Apps, and the Apps will not be saved with mechanical codes when development has completed. Therefore, hackers only need to use decompiling tools to acquire the source code for popular Apps. This way, not only can they find the loopholes or vulnerabilities of the Apps, they can also embed malicious programs by modifying the memory, and launch it on the Google Play platform again to achieve the goal of intruding mobile devices. As indicated by a research published by Trend Micro, the malicious programs called FAKEBANK and BANKUN use Google Play icons to trick users into downloading and executing these programs, and stealing the victims’ financial related information to help culprits launch network phishing attacks.

Paul Ding stated that the audit process for launching new Apps on the Google Play platform is not extremely strict, and that is why that platform has many Apps with malicious programs embedded. For example, the Virus Shield antivirus software that once had a score as high as 4.7 and over dozens of thousands of downloads on Google Play was removed only a few days after it was launched because many of the functions that the App claimed to have were fake. The hackers have posted many videos of the Apps of Taiwan financial companies being hacked on many of the video websites in China (such as v.qq.com). This shows that many companies did not have sufficient time to verify the security of their Apps just because they were in a hurry to get a piece of action in the mobile payment market. Therefore, only by seeking the help of companies with professional information security knowledge can the risk of Apps be reduced to a minimum.

Gamania CloudForce not only provides testing services for Apps to help developers correct the loophole risks of mobile payment mechanisms, it also released the appGuard that can protect the security of Apps. The four greatest features of this software are that it can prevent reverse engineering, prevent Apps from being tampered with, block debugging, block the embedding of malicious programs and save information with encryptions etc. The most special thing about it is that financial companies do not need to provide the source codes for appGuard to protect the binary files (apk files) and IPA files directly; it also complies with the mobile App information security testing benchmark from the Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs without affecting existing functions of the App.

Paul Ding indicated that the time needed for appGuard to repack Apps is very short and can be completed in approximately 30 minutes; customers only need to perform signature tests and then they can apply for the Apps to be launched on Google Play/iOS platforms. This way, mobile payment companies will not have to worry about their Apps being cracked by hackers and can just focus on the promotion and opening of innovative services, providing the best service qualities for consumers.