freeRASP for Cordova

freeRASP for Cordova is a mobile in-app protection and security monitoring plugin. It aims to cover the main aspects of RASP (Runtime App Self Protection) and application shielding.

:notebook_with_decorative_cover: Table of contents

• Overview
• Usage
  • (Optional) Create a new Cordova demo application
  • Step 1: Talsec Cordova plugin prerequisites
  • Step 2: Install the plugin
  • Step 3: Setup the Configuration for your App
    • Dev vs Release version
  • Step 4: Handle detected threats
  • Step 5: Start the Talsec
  • Step 6: Additional note about obfuscation
  • Step 7: User Data Policies
• Security Report
• Talsec Commercial Subscriptions
  • Plans comparison
• About Us
• License

Overview

The freeRASP is available for Flutter, Cordova, Android, and iOS developers. We encourage community contributions, investigations of attack cases, joint data research, and other activities aiming to make better app security and app safety for end-users.

freeRASP plugin is designed to combat

• Reverse engineering attempts
• Re-publishing or tampering with the apps
• Running application in a compromised OS environment
• Malware, fraudsters, and cybercriminal activities

Key features are the detection and prevention of

• Root/Jailbreak (e.g., unc0ver, check1rain)
• Hooking framework (e.g., Frida, Shadow)
• Untrusted installation method
• App/Device (un)binding

Additional freeRASP features include low latency, easy integration and a weekly Security Report containing detailed information about detected incidents and potential threats, summarizing the state of your app security.

The commercial version provides a top-notch protection level, extra features, support and maintenance. One of the most valued commercial features is AppiCrypt® - App Integrity Cryptogram.

It allows easy to implement API protection and App Integrity verification on the backend to prevent API abuse:

• Bruteforce attacks
• Botnets
• Session-hijacking
• DDoS

It is a unified solution that works across all mobile platforms without dependency on external web services (i.e., without extra latency, an additional point of failure, and maintenance costs).

Learn more about commercial features at https://talsec.app.

Learn more about freemium freeRASP features at GitHub main repository.

Usage

We will guide you step-by-step, but you can always check the expected result in the example.

(Optional) Create a new Cordova demo application

Create a new Cordova project:

$ cordova create hello com.example.helloapp Hello

Add platforms to your Cordova project:

$ cd hello
$ cordova platform add android
$ cordova platform add ios

Step 1: Talsec Cordova plugin prerequisites

Android

freeRASP for Android requires a minSdkVersion level of >=23 and a targetSdkVersion level of >=31. Cordova projects, by default, support even lower levels of minimum and target SDKs. This creates an inconsistency we must solve by updating the SDK levels of the application. Additionally, the freeRASP Cordova plugin uses Kotlin; add the following lines into the config.xml file in your project root directory to enable Kotlin and set the required SDK versions.

<preference name="GradlePluginKotlinEnabled" value="true" />
<preference name="GradlePluginKotlinCodeStyle" value="official" />
<preference name="GradlePluginKotlinVersion" value="1.7.10" />
<preference name="android-minSdkVersion" value="23" />
<preference name="android-targetSdkVersion" value="31" />
<preference name="android-compileSdkVersion" value="31" />

Then run following command to apply the preferences:

$ cordova prepare android

iOS

Talsec Cordova plugin uses Swift, add following plugin to support Swift.

$ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-add-swift-support --save

IMPORTANT: If you are upgrading from freeRASP 2.x.x or 1.x.x, please remove the old TalsecRuntime.xcframework and integration script from your project:

1. Open up the .xcworkspace file
2. Go to Target -> Build Phases -> Link Binary With Libraries
3. Remove TalsecRuntime.xcframework
4. On top bar select Product -> Scheme -> Edit Scheme...
5. On the left side select Build -> Pre-actions
6. Find integration script and click trash icon on the right side to remove it
7. Update freeRASP

Step 2: Install the plugin

$ cordova plugin add cordova-talsec-plugin-freerasp

Step 3: Setup the Configuration for your App

You need to provide configuration for freeRASP to work properly and initialize it. The freeRASP configuration is an JavaScript object that contains configs for both Android and iOS, as well as common configuration. You must fill all the required values for the plugin to work. Use the following template to provide configuration to the Talsec plugin. You can find detailed description of the configuration below.

var config = {
    androidConfig: {
        packageName: 'com.example.helloapp',
        certificateHashes: ['your_signing_certificate_hash_base64'],
        supportedAlternativeStores: ['com.sec.android.app.samsungapps'],
    },
    iosConfig: {
        appBundleIds: 'com.example.helloapp',
        appTeamId: 'your_team_ID'
    },
    watcherMail: '[email protected]',
    isProd: true
};

The configuration object should consist of:

1. androidConfig : object | undefined - required for Android devices, has following keys:

   • packageName : string - package name of your app you chose when you created it
   • certificateHashes : string[] - hash of the certificate of the key which was used to sign the application. Hash which is passed here must be encoded in Base64 form. If you are not sure how to get your certificate hash, you can check out the guide on our Github wiki. Multiple hashes are supported, e.g. if you are using a different one for the Huawei App Gallery.
   • supportedAlternativeStores : string[] | undefined - Google Play Store and Huawei AppGallery are supported out of the box, you don't have to assign anything. You can add other stores like the Samsung Galaxy Store in the example code (com.sec.android.app.samsungapps). For more information, visit the Detecting Unofficial Installation wiki page.

2. iosConfig : object | undefined - required for iOS devices, has following keys:

   • appBundleId : string - Bundle ID of your app
   • appTeamId : string - the Apple Team ID

3. watcherMail : string - your mail address where you wish to receive reports. Mail has a strict form [email protected] which is passed as String.

4. isProd : boolean | undefined - defaults to true when undefined. If you want to use the Dev version to disable checks described in the chapter below, set the parameter to false. Make sure that you have the Release version in the production (i.e. isProd set to true)!

If you are developing only for one of the platforms, you can skip the configuration part for the other one, i.e., delete the unused configuration.

Dev vs Release version

The Dev version is used to not complicate the development process of the application, e.g. if you would implement killing of the application on the debugger callback. It disables some checks which won't be triggered during the development process:

• Emulator-usage (simulator)
• Debugging (debug)
• Signing (appIntegrity)
• Unofficial store (unofficialStore)

Step 4: Handle detected threats

Talsec executes periodical checks when the application is running. To be able to receive detected threats, you need to provide listener to the plugin. The threat types are defined in the example bellow:

// reactions to detected threats
const actions = {
  // Android & iOS
  privilegedAccess: () => {
    console.log('privilegedAccess');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  debug: () => {
    console.log('debug');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  simulator: () => {
    console.log('simulator');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  appIntegrity: () => {
    console.log('appIntegrity');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  unofficialStore: () => {
    console.log('unofficialStore');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  hooks: () => {
    console.log('hooks');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  deviceBinding: () => {
    console.log('deviceBinding');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  secureHardwareNotAvailable: () => {
    console.log('secureHardwareNotAvailable');
  },
  // Android & iOS
  passcode: () => {
    console.log('passcode');
  },
  // iOS only
  deviceID: () => {
    console.log('deviceID');
  },
  // Android only
  obfuscationIssues: () => {
    console.log('obfuscationIssues');
  },
};

Visit our wiki to learn more details about the performed checks and their importance for app security.

Step 5: Start the Talsec

Talsec can be started after the Cordova initialization is completed.

The initialization should be done inside the onDeviceReady function in the index.js.

talsec
    .start(config, actions)
    .then(() => {
        console.log('Talsec initialized.');
    })
    .catch((error) => {
        console.log('Error during Talsec initialization: ', error);
    });

Step 6: Additional note about obfuscation

The freeRASP contains public API, so the integration process is as simple as possible. Unfortunately, this public API also creates opportunities for the attacker to use publicly available information to interrupt freeRASP operations or modify your custom reaction implementation in threat callbacks. In order to provide as much protection as possible, freeRASP obfuscates its source code. However, if all other code is not obfuscated, one can easily deduct that the obfuscated code belongs to a security library. We, therefore, encourage you to apply code obfuscation to your app, making the public API more difficult to find and also partially randomized for each application so it cannot be automatically abused by generic hooking scripts.

Probably the easiest way to obfuscate your app is via code minification, a technique that reduces the size of the compiled code by removing unnecessary characters, whitespace, and renaming variables and functions to shorter names. It can be configured for Android devices in android/app/build.gradle like so:

android {
    buildTypes {
        release {
            ...
            minifyEnabled true
            shrinkResources true
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile("proguard-android.txt"), "proguard-rules.pro"
        }
    }
}

Additionally, create or extend proguard-rules.pro in android/app folder and exclude Cordova’s specific classes that rely on package names from being obfuscated:

-keep class org.apache.cordova.** {*;}
-keep public class * extends org.apache.cordova.CordovaPlugin
-flattenpackagehierarchy

Please note that some other modules in your app may rely on reflection, therefore it may be necessary to add corresponding keep rules into proguard-rules.pro file.

If there is a problem with the obfuscation, freeRASP will notify you about it via obfuscationIssues callback.

You can read more about Android obfuscation in the official documentation:

• https://developer.android.com/studio/build/shrink-code
• https://www.guardsquare.com/manual/configuration/usage

Step 7: User Data Policies

See the generic info about freeRASP data collection here.

Google Play requires all app publishers to declare how they collect and handle user data for the apps they publish on Google Play. They should inform users properly of the data collected by the apps and how the data is shared and processed. Therefore, Google will reject the apps which do not comply with the policy.

Apple has a similar approach and specifies the types of collected data.

You should also visit our Android and iOS submodules to learn more about their respective data policies.

And you're done 🎉!

If you encounter any other issues, you can see the list of solved issues here, or open up a new one.

Security Report

The Security Report is a weekly summary describing the application's security state and characteristics of the devices it runs on in a practical and easy-to-understand way.

The report provides a quick overview of the security incidents, their dynamics, app integrity, and reverse engineering attempts. It contains info about the security of devices, such as OS version or the ratio of devices with screen locks and biometrics. Each visualization also comes with a concise explanation.

To receive Security Reports, fill out the watcherMail field in config.

:money_with_wings: Talsec Commercial Subscriptions

Talsec offers commercial plans on top of freeRASP (Business RASP+):

• No limits of Fair Usage Policy (100K App Downloads)
• No Data Collection from your app
• FinTech grade security, features and SLA (see more in this post)
• Protect APIs and risk scoring by AppiCrypt®

Learn more at talsec.app.

Not to overlook, the one of the most valued commercial features is AppiCrypt® - App Integrity Cryptogram.

It allows easy-to-implement API protection and App Integrity verification on the backend to prevent API abuse:

• Bruteforce attacks
• Botnets
• API abuse by App impersonation
• Session-hijacking
• DDoS

It is a unified solution that works across all mobile platforms without dependency on external web services (i.e., without extra latency, an additional point of failure, and maintenance costs).

Learn more about commercial features at talsec.app.

TIP: You can try freeRASP and then upgrade easily to an enterprise service.

Plans Comparison

For further comparison details (and planned features), follow our discussion.

About Us

Talsec is an academic-based and community-driven mobile security company. We deliver in-App Protection and a User Safety suite for Fintechs. We aim to bridge the gaps between the user's perception of app safety and the strong security requirements of the financial industry.

Talsec offers a wide range of security solutions, such as App and API protection SDK, Penetration testing, monitoring services, and the User Safety suite. You can check out offered products at our web.

License

This project is provided as freemium software i.e. there is a fair usage policy that impose some limitations on the free usage. The SDK software consists of opensource and binary part which is property of Talsec. The opensource part is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.