(In)Security of mobile apps in developing countries: a systematic literature review

In developing countries, several key sectors, including education, finance, agriculture, and healthcare, mainly deliver their services via mobile app technology on handheld devices. These regions often face unique challenges such as limited cybersecurity infrastructure, lower digital literacy rates, and higher incidences of cyber threats targeting mobile platforms. Consequently, mobile app security has emerged as a paramount issue in developing countries, where the impact of security breaches can be more severe due to these vulnerabilities. In this paper, we performed a systematic literature review to identify studies on mobile app security in developing countries. We identified 25 primary studies and analysed the existing research directions taken, the different security concerns addressed, and the techniques used by researchers to highlight or address app security issues. Our main findings are: (1) the literature includes only a few studies on mobile app security in the context of developing countries (only 25 publications found); (2) among the different security concerns that researchers study, vulnerability detection appears to be the leading research topic; and (3) FinTech apps are revealed as the main target in the relevant literature. Overall, our work highlights that there is largely room for developing further specialized techniques addressing mobile app security in the context of developing countries.