MPoC Solutions:

Principal Threats and Importance of Penetration Testing

MPoC Solution Principal Threats

While such mobile point of sales systems offer many benefits, they also come with security risks that have to be taken into account during development of an MPoC solution. 

The main difference between a dedicated POS terminal and a mobile application on COTS is that the former is a hardware device specifically designed to protect sensitive payment assets such as card's PAN (Primary Account Number) and cardholder PIN (Personal Identification Number). 

On the contrary, a mobile device shall be considered as an untrusted platform meaning that integrated security controls provided by the device operating system (OS) can be deactivated. In that case an attacker can gain full control over the device and applications running on it. 

That is why an MPoC solution shall introduce additional robust security mechanisms to protect sensitive data that it handles. 

The MPoC specification defines security requirements that shall be fulfilled by a mobile  payment on COTS solution to protect the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive 

payment information handled by the solution. In particular, there a list of requirements covering software protection mechanisms of the MPoC solution. 

Some of these security measures are embedded in the application and serves for the purpose of local detection of a security compromise like rooting, debugging, tampering with the application, presence of hooking framework, etc. 

There are various software protection tools available for mobile applications that offer code obfuscation and runtime security measures. However, these tools must be properly configured and integrated into the application. Based on our experience, this is not always done correctly, which can lead to security vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is essential to independently test the integration of these tools in the application. 

Online nature of mobile devices used for MPoC applications provides additional assurance via a remote attestation system which can monitor the integrity of the device and the application, detect anomalies and threats and implement countermeasures. 

However, like any security mechanism, remote attestation has its vulnerabilities and challenges. 

Here are some common vulnerabilities associated with remote attestation: 

•  Spoofing Attacks: an attacker may attempt to spoof device data collected by the attestation system and mislead it into accepting a compromised mobile device or the application as trustworthy.
• Replay Attacks: an attacker intercepts and reuses valid attestation data to deceive the remote verifier. 
• Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks: an attacker intercepts and alters the communication between the COTS and the attestation system. 
• Configuration Flaws: incorrect or insecure configurations of attestation services can make the attestation process ineffective.