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Application & OT Security · Intermediate

Insufficient Binary Protections

Mobile Top 10 2024 risk (M7) where app binaries lack protections against reverse engineering and tampering.

Definition

Attackers decompile apps to find secrets, understand APIs, bypass license checks or repackage them with malware. Protections include obfuscation, anti-tampering and integrity checks, anti-debugging, root/jailbreak detection and server-side attestation. These raise attacker cost but never replace server-side security.

Example

A game is decompiled, its in-app purchase check removed and the modified APK redistributed.

Exam tip

Binary protections are resilience controls (MASVS-RESILIENCE), not substitutes for server-side checks.

Related terms