A recent Cybernews investigation revealed that over 71% of iOS apps leak hardcoded secrets, exposing mobile users and businesses to significant security risks. These embedded credentials – API keys, authentication tokens, cloud storage access, and more – can be exploited to launch credential stuffing, bot attacks, account takeovers (ATOs), commit fraud and other modern cyber threats. In this blog, we’ll explore the implications of these findings, why manually coding protections isn’t enough, and how Appdome’s AI-Native Platform offers an automated, scalable solution that mobile businesses can deploy in minutes.
iOS Apps Leak Hardcoded Secrets
Cybernews researchers found more than 156,000 iOS apps that exposed more than 815,000 hardcoded secrets. The scale of the issue is alarming in that 71% of the iOS apps analyzed leaked at least one secret. This was true from apps across different industries, ranging from productivity tools to financial services and e-commerce platforms. Issues included:
- AWS keys and access tokens
- Google Cloud and Firebase credentials
- API keys to third-party services
- OAuth client secrets and JWT tokens
The presence of such secrets in production apps allows attackers to reverse engineer the binaries and extract high-value data. While developers may hardcode secrets for convenience or speed, this practice fundamentally violates secure coding principles and undermines the integrity of the mobile ecosystem.
Attackers don’t need sophisticated zero-days when apps are already leaking the keys to the kingdom. Here’s a breakdown of how these flaws enable modern-day attacks on iOS and Android apps:
Hardcoded Authentication Tokens Lead to Account Takeovers (ATOs)
Developers directly embed hardcoded authentication tokens – API keys, OAuth tokens, JWT session keys, session IDs, or even static passwords – into the source code of the app. These tokens are used to authenticate the app or the user to backend services. In iOS apps, developers sometimes hardcode these tokens into the app bundle for convenience or due to poor security practices. This allows hackers and criminals to use these hardcoded tokens in Account Takeover (ATO) attacks. Specifically, they can:
- Extract the tokens: using tools like Hopper and Ghidra, they can reverse-engineer or decompile the app and search for strings to extract the tokens or inspect the app bundle if the token is stored in a plist, configuration file, or Swift/Objective-C code.
- API abuse and data theft: Criminals can use the stolen token to access sensitive user data, perform unauthorized transactions or manipulate app behavior. All of which leads to Account Takeovers in banking and financial services apps.
- Persistent Exploits: If token rotation best practices are not followed, hardcoded tokens can provide an indefinite open door for attackers.
Combined with insecure backend validation, this can allow full takeovers of mobile user accounts, including financial, healthcare, or business data. ATOs remain one of the costliest types of fraud in mobile. Once inside, attackers can drain accounts, change passwords, and pivot to other systems using the victim’s digital identity. Here are some real-world examples where hardcoded authentication tokens led to account takeovers in iOS apps.
Hardcoded API Keys Facilitate Mobile Bot Attacks
Hardcoded API keys make it easy for adversaries to masquerade as legitimate apps and spin up massive botnets that:
- Hammer mobile APIs with login, registration, and purchase attempts
- Flood systems with fake traffic to scrape content, abuse promo codes, or launch denial-of-service attacks
- Simulate in-app events to steal business logic, content, or ad revenue
Attackers can automate these operations using scripts that mimic mobile app behavior. Because the keys embedded in the app code are valid, most backend systems trust the traffic, unless advanced bot defense is in place.
One example of a mobile bot attack that can leverage hardcoded API keys is Credential Stuffing. When mobile login APIs are protected only by weak credentials or access tokens exposed in code, attackers can:
- Use credential dumps from prior breaches (e.g., LinkedIn, Adobe) to mass-validate usernames/passwords
- Leverage hardcoded API URLs and tokens to bypass client rate limiting and throttle detection
- Spread login attempts across different IPs or devices while keeping the same API key
Credential stuffing works especially well when apps reuse the same access tokens for all users, something developers sometimes hardcode for testing and forget to remove in production.
Here are some real-world examples of how hardcoded API keys facilitated mobile bot attacks.
Hardcoded Firebase or AWS S3 Secrets Lead to Mobile App Fraud
Hardcoded secrets in mobile apps – such as Firebase API keys, S3 bucket credentials, authentication tokens or access credentials – can be a major security vulnerability that enables a wide range of fraud scenarios, particularly in BFSI, e-commerce, and healthcare apps:
- Unauthorized access to backend services: This allows hackers to query databases, access users records, modify backend data, list download or delete files and even upload malicious files disguised as legit content. All this can result in data theft or data manipulation.
- Impersonation: With exposed secrets, criminals can create fraudulent accounts or trigger fraudulent transactions such as refund, coupon or loyalty fraud.
- Bypass security rules: Hardcoded secrets can give criminals admin privileges which allows them to disable security features, change rules and carry out fraud at scale.
This isn’t theoretical – here are some real-world examples where hardcoded Firebase and AWS S3 Secrets lead to mobile app fraud.
Why It’s Hard to Manually Protect Against These Threats
Developers and mobile teams are under intense pressure to release features fast. In this environment, securing the app codebase often takes a backseat. Here are some of the real-world reasons hardcoded secrets keep slipping into production:
- Poor secret management practices: Developers may store API keys or tokens in config files or directly in code for convenience.
- No centralized secret vault integration: Teams lack secure methods to inject secrets at runtime, particularly in CI/CD pipelines.
- Lack of secure mobile DevSecOps processes: Without automated scanning or protection enforcement, dangerous code can pass into production undetected.
- SDK and framework limitations: Some SDKs recommend or require embedding keys in the app to initialize services like push notifications or analytics.
- Inefficient tooling: Traditional static analyzers may flag these secrets, but remediation is often manual and time-consuming.
- Resistance to change: Once something “works”, it tends to stay, even if insecure.
Manually removing secrets and implementing safe handling (e.g., retrieving keys from a secure vault at runtime) requires time, testing, and deep changes to app architecture. For many mobile teams, it’s just not feasible – especially at scale.
How Appdome Solves the Hardcoded Secrets Problem Instantly
Appdome’s AI-Native Platform offers mobile businesses a fast, scalable, and code-free way to protect against the risks posed by hardcoded secrets – without rewriting apps or changing workflows and thereby improving the security of their iOS apps. Here are the top reasons why Appdome solves the hardcoded secrets problem instantly:
- ✅ Real-Time Code Obfuscation and Data Encryption
- Appdome automatically encrypts static strings, plists and binary resources where secrets are often stored and thus preventing data leaks in iOS apps.
- This prevents attackers from reverse engineering the app and extracting embedded credentials – even if developers forgot to remove them.
- ✅ API Protection and Certificate Pinning
- Even if a secret or token is exposed, Appdome prevents man-in-the-middle attacks or credential theft via strong API protection, TLS enforcement, and dynamic certificate pinning.
- Fake apps and bots using those secrets are denied access at runtime.
- ✅ Anti-Bot, Anti-Automation & Anti-Fraud Controls
- Detect and stop bots trying to use stolen tokens or credentials to abuse mobile services.
- Protect login, registration, and sensitive business workflows from credential stuffing and fake automation.
- ✅ ThreatScope™ and Threat-Events™
- Appdome offers rich in-app telemetry and threat visibility when secrets are misused or attacks are attempted.
- Developers and SOC teams can receive real-time alerts and take adaptive responses, such as blocking access, forcing MFA, or notifying the user.
- ✅ No Code, No SDK, No Delay
- Appdome integrates directly into CI/CD pipelines, requiring no changes to the source code.
- Mobile developers just upload the binary and apply protections via point-and-click policy configuration.
- Protections are certified and tested automatically, reducing time-to-deploy from weeks to minutes.
Protecting Mobile Businesses From the Inside Out
Hardcoded secrets are one of the oldest yet most dangerous security flaws in mobile app development – and they remain widespread. As Cybernews showed, the issue is systemic across thousands of iOS apps and affects every category from consumer to enterprise. And the same goes for Android apps BTW.
Manually fixing these issues is resource-intensive, error-prone, and often not scalable. Appdome offers mobile businesses a better way to improve iOS mobile security: AI-driven, fully automated protection that prevents attackers from exploiting embedded secrets to take over accounts, deploy bots, or commit fraud.
With Appdome, mobile businesses don’t just plug a leak – they raise the waterline.
