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Mobile Shielding Scan

The Mobile Shielding Scan is a specialized security assessment profile designed to evaluate the effectiveness of application hardening, code protection, and anti-tampering measures on Android and iOS applications.

Unlike standard vulnerability scanning, the Shielding Scan focuses on validating the resilience of your binary against reverse engineering, unauthorized tampering, dynamic analysis, and debugging. The Mobile Deep Agentic Scan includes the same checks alongside its vulnerability testing; run this profile to test hardening on its own.

🎯 Key Features and Coverage

The Mobile Shielding Scan performs in-depth automated verification across several hardening vectors:

  • Obfuscation Detection on Android and iOS: Evaluates obfuscation coverage using signals such as encrypted string distribution, name shrinkage, and the detection of signatures from well-known obfuscators.
  • Anti-Tampering and Anti-Debugging Checks: Assesses protections related to debugger presence, instrumentation tools, signature disruption, and other mechanisms intended to detect or resist tampering and runtime analysis.
  • Root and Jailbreak Detection: Runs the application in rooted or jailbroken environments and observes how it reacts to determine whether environment checks are present and effective.
  • AI-Powered Bypass Validation: Uses an AI-powered bypass phase to test how resilient the shielding controls are when faced with attempts to evade or work around them.

🚀 Setup and Configuration Guide

To launch a Mobile Shielding Scan, follow the step-by-step guide below:

Step 1: Select the Application

  1. Click New Scan in the top bar.

    Open the new scan flow

  2. Select the target asset source:

    • PlayStore / AppStore: search for and select the published application.
    • Android App / iOS App: upload a pre-compiled APK, AAB or IPA.
    • iOS TestFlight: select a TestFlight build.

    (Optional) Add a scan title.

    Select the mobile application source

  3. Search for or select the target mobile application, and click Continue. The optional Extra Context step lets you add related assets to the scan; click Continue to skip it.

    Search for or select the mobile application

Step 2: Select the Scan Profile

  1. Under the scan profile options, select Mobile Shielding Scan. This configures the engine to run specialized static and dynamic hardening tests.

    Select the Mobile Shielding Scan profile

  2. Click Continue.

Step 3: Review the Guardrails

Guardrails configure the scan scope and approval behavior for risky agent actions. Choose the approval behavior, then set vulnerability scope, blocked IPs and additional instructions as needed.

  • Approval of actions (Approve the actions of an AI agent): what the AI agents do before a risky action:
    • Run without asking: they run it on their own.
    • Ask me, block if no answer: they ask you first, and skip the action if nobody answers.
    • Ask me, run if no answer: they ask you first, and run the action if nobody answers.
  • Vulnerability scope, Blocked IPs and Additional instructions are optional.

Click Continue.

Review the guardrails

Step 4: Configure the AI Provider & Effort

The Mobile Shielding Scan can run on Ostorlab’s Cybermodels, or on your own API key via BYOK Simple or BYOK Advanced. Simple uses one provider key for all scan stages; Advanced lets you choose keys and models for individual tasks.

  1. Select the AI provider you want to use for the scan: Cybermodels, BYOK Simple or BYOK Advanced. Click Continue.

    Select the AI provider

  2. Set the Effort, based on the complexity and size of your application:

    • Core (50 tokens): Rapid baseline verification of standard hardening indicators.
    • Advanced (200 tokens): Deep exploration of binary resilience with moderate execution coverage.
    • Elite (400 tokens): Exhaustive, highly parallelized assessment.
    • Custom Tokens: set your own number of tokens.

    Click Estimate this scan to get a token estimate and an effort recommendation for your application.

    Configure the effort level

  3. Click Continue.

Step 5: Optional Steps & Start scan

  1. Configure the optional steps as needed:
    • Prompts: steer the agent’s interaction with the application.
    • Test Credentials: let the agent log in and test shielding controls after authentication.
    • Advanced Settings: configure request rate, proxy routing and URL scope.
    • Tags: add labels to organize the scan.

  2. Click Start scan in the panel on the right to queue and launch your scan.

    Start the Mobile Shielding Scan

📊 Reviewing Scan Results

When the scan is done, open it from Scans in the top bar. The Vulnerabilities list shows one result per protection that was tested:

  • Secure: the protection is in place and worked, for example Root/Jailbreak Detection Implemented or Android Obfuscation Detected.
  • Hardening (needed): the protection is missing, for example Missing Frida Instrumentation Detection or SSL/TLS Certificate Pinning Not Implemented.

Review the Mobile Shielding Scan results

Open a result to see its description, the technical details of what was tested, and the recommendation to fix it.

Review the details of a result