How To Protect Your Fintech Mobile App

India’s digital payment ecosystem, powered by Unified Payments Interface (UPI), is widely used in India. This rapid growth of daily digital transactions led to increased sophisticated cyber attacks. Attackers are advancing themselves to bypass traditional controls, increasing the need for robust Fintech app security. Recently, Account takeover attacks have increased and become a very serious issue for payment applications. Let’s understand why account takeover is a serious cybersecurity issue.

What is Account Takeover?

Account Takeover is a type of cyber attack where attackers gain unauthorised access to user accounts and perform fraudulent transactions. Modern malware campaigns, such the recent one, “Digital Lootera" exploit weaknesses in the mobile environment by manipulating SIM binding and intercepting OTPs. This is executed by manipulating the users to download fake apk or accidentally downloading the fake app on the device. This fake app works in the background and takes access to read and send messages to extract OTPs and perform unauthorised transactions and logins.

To prevent ATO attacks, UPI based fintech apps rely on following security checks:

• SIM binding verification.

• SMS based OTP or Auto read OTP.

• Device Identity validation.

• Verifies application signature checks.

These are effective against basic threats, but can be bypassed on rooted or compromised devices through SSL pinning bypass and API interception.

This is where modern Fintech app security must go beyond traditional methods and focus on runtime protection within the application itself. Instead of relying solely on external defenses, apps need built-in mechanisms that actively detect and block threats in real time.

A RASP solution like Bugsmirror Defender provides advanced runtime application self-protection (RASP) to secure mobile apps from evolving threats. It prevents the app from running into rooted devices or environments using tools like Frida or Magisk, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorised access. It strengthens SSL pinning to stop Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks.

Additionally to protect apps from reverse engineering, Bugsmirror Shield provides advanced code obfuscation and encryption. It further strengthens app security.

Read the full article on emerging Account Takeover Attack patterns here: Account takeover attacks.

Get a protection cover of Bugsmirror Defender and Bugsmirror Shield to protect your fintech app against ATO attacks.  Contact Bugsmirror!