98% of mobile apps of Top 50 Indian eCommerce companies vulnerable to security attacks

India is witnessing an eCommerce boom with the market predicted to grow from $17 billion right now to $100 billion by 2019. India's smartphone boom, which is already taking hold in the eCommerce ecosystem, could turn out to be particularly important factor. With more Indian eCommerce players focusing on mobile apps with a clear strategy towards achieving tall app installs & engagement, smartphones have increasingly replaced PCs for online shopping.

Many users are doing their first online transactions with the eCommerce players, and the smartphone is the medium for many of them. Thus, the trust factor is very important.

Productivity and innovation are the two focus areas of mobile app developers. But while their focus lies on those two attributes, there is a huge gap in the security of the apps. It is because of this reason that nearly 80% of all android apps are vulnerable and can therefore be hacked into.

Mobile App Security specialist, Weiglant scanned the respective mobile apps on Appvigil, an automated mobile app vulnerability scanner. The analysis unveiled that 98% of mobile apps of the Top 50 eCommerce companies in India are vulnerable to security attacks. These apps have concerning security issues, which if exploited by attackers to perform malicious activities, can cause great harm to the users & the concerned brands.

The report highlights some extremely important points. The fact that the total value of transactions on mobile phones in India jumped by 383% to $5.8 billion (Rs. 36,000 crore) between 2013 & 2014 and that will only grow, is evident enough for stringent security measures for mobile apps to be adopted. In such a scenario, when market players are transforming from mobile first to mobile only and the users eventually getting comfortable with online payments, recent hacks of Zomato, Ola Cabs, Gaana, Foodpanda have raised an alarm. The report says that it is shocking that even the basic security practices haven’t been setup and security alerts from the hackers, experts, have fallen on deaf ears.

The analysis by Weiglant unveiled that 98% of mobile apps of the Top 50 eCommerce companies in India are vulnerable to security attacks. These apps have concerning security issues, which if exploited by attackers to perform malicious activities, can cause great harm to the users and the concerned brands.

A total of 1243 security vulnerabilities were found after scanning all the 50 apps from across the domains. Where a large chunk of apps have less count of vulnerabilities, a significant number of apps still have more than 50 vulnerabilities in their apps. What is scary is the fac that high and medium level severity vulnerabilities comprised more than 90% of the total 1243 security vulnerabilities found in 50 scanned apps