Security is often overlooked while building apps, which is not good for both your company and your users. Now it’s true that making an impenetrable security system is impossible, but we can install the maximum security possible to our product to make it as much trustworthy as possible. With more and more people adapting to new technology and the world of tech and software growing bigger and bigger, React Native security becomes a major issue. As the internet expands its reach, the probability of cyber attacks and online theft increases. People who don’t fully understand the internet get cheated and fall victim to online fraud. Thus, it becomes the responsibility of the service provider to give maximum possible security to all its clients. There are several ways to provide internet security. ReactNative is one of the abundantly used solutions for providing security.
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What is ReactNative?
ReactNative is an open-source cross-platform framework for creating mobile applications. It is developed by Facebook. It is used to create apps for various operating systems like macOS, windows, android, iOS, etc. ReactNative is based on JavaScript. It uses ReactJS for building user interfaces and various components for apps and websites.
Now, when looking at the apps built with ReactNative from a security perspective, we need to analyze all its parts one by one and also the communication happening between them. Since many parts are working simultaneously in a ReactNative code thus a lot of things have to be fully proofed to provide the most secure application possible.
ReactNative Security
ReactNative is very prone to security threats and hacking attacks like all the other JavaScriptbased frameworks. While analyzing the code from a security point of view, we need to consider different parts of the code and their connection. ReactNative codes are more vulnerable to security breaches as the source code is available to the client.
Some very common security issues in JS applications are:
1.Cross-site scripting:
This happens when the hacker tricks the website into running some random malicious JS code in the user’s browser. These are also known as XSS attacks. There are 2 types of XSS attacks, the reflected XSS attack, and the stored XSS attack.
2. Insecure Randomness and links:
This happens when malicious code is added to the original code which is based on the data entered by the client.
3. Arbitrary code execution:
This occurs when the hacker or attacker uses a program called arbitrary code execution exploit to execute arbitrary commands on the client’s system. This can be extremely harmful as the user’s complete system gets exposed to the malware and all the data can be compromised.
4. Zil slip:
This happens when the security of the code library gets compromised. The hacker can unzip and install malicious codes or files in the target’s system. This also gives the attacker power to overwrite certain important system files and configuration settings.
Benefits of ReactNative Security
Below are some of the benefits of having good and advanced ReactNative security.
Securing App-to-server connection:
Since the applications based on ReactNative are open-source, so they are highly exposed to threats. Therefore, the communication between the client and the server needs to be secured. The most commonly used service for this communication between the client and the server is based on HTTP. Now 2 points are of quite some importance in an HTTPS connection, a valid certificate and a cipher used for encryption during transmission. The certificate serves as identity proof for the server. The connection will not be completed until the server can provide a valid certificate authorized by a trusted certificate authority. This can be misused by hackers by using a malicious or rooted certificate. Therefore, various users must be provided with a realm attribute with different codes to prevent a mismatch of credentials. Just a slight mismatch can compromise the complete security of the app.
SSL Pinning in ReactNative:
Secure Sockets Layer or SSL is a process or a set of instructions to establish original and encrypted links between the computers in the network. The term SSL pinning refers to the method which validates the server certificates during the runtime from the client’s side even after the handshaking. Server certificates are crosschecked with the local list of the certificates and if the match is not found the connection is discontinued immediately and no data is forwarded to the server. But it must be kept in mind that when the pinned server is expired the future certificates must be pinned to the application before release. If the new and updated certificate is not pinned then it will not be matched and the process will be terminated. This process is called ‘app bricking’. Certificate pinning can be implemented in 3 ways in android, network security configuration, TrustManager, OkHttp, and certificate pinning
Code Obfuscation:
One of the most commonly used methods to secure private sensitive information is Code Obfuscation. It takes the code and makes it unreadable using some software like Uglify.
Advanced ReactNative Security:
Using apps on rooted or broken devices is very risky and should be avoided. They allow the hackers to overcome the security barriers installed in the OS and provide them access to the sensitive information stored within the application.
RASP:
Runtime Application Self Protection is a tool that can continuously keep running checks to find if any breach has occurred and detect if an attack has taken place and protect the application. It also adds another additional layer to the security with the app monitoring tools
Conclusion
ReactNative is one of the most commonly used frameworks to build apps. Thus, ReactNative security has a very important role in maintaining the security of the application. As a service provider, it becomes your responsibility to protect the sensitive and private information of your users. Appsealing provides the perfect solution to this with our continuously updated security patches and security systems. You can protect your application without any hassle or any extra coding with the help of Appsealing. Although it is impossible to create a full-proof mechanism you can equip your application with the maximum security possible and ReactNative security is the best way to do so.
