viaForensics uncovers holes in smart phone financial app

CHICAGO, USA: viaForensics has released updated appWatchdog findings for mobile financial applications on both Google Android and Apple iPhone devices.

On the heels of the news of PayPal’s vulnerable iPhone application, The Wall Street Journal broke news of additional vulnerabilities in other major financial institutions’ smart phone applications.

These security flaws were uncovered by computer and mobile forensics firm, viaForensics, who tested smart phone applications from Bank Of America, Chase, TD Ameritrade, USAA, Wells Fargo and Vanguard, in addition to PayPal.

According to a release, viaForensics has been communicating and coordinating with the financial institutions to address the flaws. Most of the institutions were able to quickly resolve the issues and release new versions of their applications.
viaForensics has retested the applications as of November 3, 2010 and released the results through appWatchdog, their powerful free service which tests publicly available mobile applications for insecure transmissions or storage of sensitive user data. The service measures much factors as how securely the app handles user names and passwords. If not handled properly, security lapses can place the user at risk for data and financial theft.

A deeper audit is offered through appSecure, which provides sophisticated security testing and recommendations for securing the app, the release added.