Re-evaluating Smartphone Messaging Application Security

During the last two years mobile messaging and VoIP applications for smartphones have seen a massive surge in popularity, which has also sparked the interest in research related to the security of these applications. Various security researchers and institutions have performed in-depth analyses of specific applications or vulnerabilities. In this paper I will give an overview of the status quo in terms of security for a number of selected applications in comparison to another evaluation conducted two years ago, as well as perform an analysis on some new applications. The evaluation methods mostly focus on known vulnerabilities in connection with authentication and validation mechanisms but also describe some newly identified attack vectors. The results show a predominantly positive trend for new applications, which are mostly being developed with robust security and privacy features, while some of the older applications have shown little to no progress in this regard or have even introduced new vulnerabilities in recent versions.