Attack vectorsHow attackers go after mobile apps
With full control of the device, attackers lean on three core techniques to understand, manipulate, and extract value from your app. A penetration test exercises each one the way a real adversary would.
Reverse Engineering
Because your app ships as a binary the user fully controls, attackers decompile it with tools like jadx and Ghidra to read your logic, lift hardcoded API keys and tokens, and learn exactly how your backend works. What looks like a compiled black box is, in practice, readable source, and anything baked into the build is recoverable. A penetration test proves what an attacker can actually extract from your shipped binary, so you can move secrets server-side and harden what's left.
At risk
Intellectual property, hardcoded keys, API design
Runtime Manipulation
On a rooted or instrumented device, attackers attach hooking frameworks like Frida to your running app and rewrite its behaviour in memory: flipping an "is jailbroken" check to false, skipping a license or payment step, or dumping decrypted data straight out of RAM. Static defenses never see it because the code on disk is untouched; the attack happens live. We reproduce these runtime bypasses by hand to show which controls actually hold when the device is hostile.
At risk
Authentication, fraud and integrity controls
Traffic Interception
Every request your app makes can be captured and modified. Attackers route traffic through proxies like Burp Suite, strip or bypass certificate pinning, and replay or tamper with API calls to escalate privileges, forge transactions, or harvest other users' data. A pentest exercises your transport security and your API the way a real adversary would, not just confirming TLS is on, but proving whether pinning, auth, and server-side checks survive an active man-in-the-middle.
At risk
Credentials, session tokens, sensitive user data