How to Detect Vishing Attacks Against Android & iOS Apps using AI

Last updated February 3, 2025 by Appdome

This Knowledge Base article describes how to use Appdome’s AI/ML in your CI/CD pipeline to continuously deliver plugins that Prevent Vishing in Mobile apps.

What is a Vishing Attack?

Vishing, or voice phishing, is a social engineering attack where fraudsters manipulate individuals through phone calls to disclose confidential information. Advanced AI tools make these attacks more effective by mimicking legitimate voices and personalizing interactions. In mobile apps, vishing often involves guiding users through transactions to extract sensitive data, leading to account takeovers (ATO) and fraud. This poses significant risks to transactional and financial data, making compliance with standards like PCI DSS and SOX critical. Detecting and mitigating vishing attacks is essential for preventing ATO, protecting user data, and maintaining security in finance and e-commerce apps.

Why Detecting Vishing Fraud is Vital?

While using a mobile app during an active call is not inherently fraudulent, the context and the specific actions being performed simultaneously can raise alerts within fraud detection systems. This is done to protect users and organizations from potential fraudulent activities, identity theft, or security breaches. These alerts trigger further verification steps or investigation to ensure the legitimacy and security of transactions or interactions taking place. This becomes particularly critical when we examine real-world scenarios where such detection capabilities are essential such as:

Fraud Patterns: In some cases, fraudsters may use multiple channels simultaneously to perpetrate fraudulent activities. For example, they might attempt to social engineer a call center representative while using an app to manipulate or access accounts simultaneously. Such simultaneous activities could raise red flags in fraud detection systems.

Anomalous Behavior: Unusual behavior patterns detected by fraud detection systems, such as a sudden change in user behavior (like accessing a banking app during an ongoing call with a customer service representative for an account-related issue), might trigger alerts for potential fraudulent activities.

Risk Mitigation: For security reasons, certain organizations or financial institutions might set policies or algorithms that flag any deviation from standard user behavior, especially during sensitive transactions, to mitigate potential risks associated with fraud or data breaches.

How does Appdome Protect Mobile Apps Against Vishing Fraud?

Appdome’s dynamic Detect Vishing Attacks plugin for Android/iOS identifies vishing-related fraud by monitoring app usage during active phone calls. The plugin analyzes behavior patterns, such as simultaneous app and phone activity, to detect unusual scenarios. When potential vishing attempts are flagged, Appdome prevents unauthorized access, protecting sensitive user data and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Mobile developers can use Appdome’s Threat-Events™ to gather real-time data on screen-sharing or recording events and create customized user experiences when such threats are detected.

 

Prerequisites for Using Appdome's Use Anti Vishing Plugins:

To use Appdome’s mobile app security build system to Prevent Vishing , you’ll need:

How to Implement Prevent Vishing in Mobile Apps Using Appdome

On Appdome, follow these 3 simple steps to create self-defending Mobile Apps that Prevent Vishing without an SDK or gateway:

  1. Designate the Mobile App to be protected.

    1. Upload an app via the Appdome Mobile Defense platform GUI or via Appdome’s DEV-API or CI/CD Plugins.

    2. Mobile App Formats: .ipa for iOS, or .apk or .aab for Android
    3. Use Anti Vishing is compatible with: Obj-C, Java, JS, C#, C++, Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, React Native, Unity, Xamarin, and more.
  2. Select the defense: Use Anti Vishing.

      1. Create and name the Fusion Set (security template) that will contain the Use Anti Vishing feature as shown below:
        fusion set that contains Use Anti Vishing

        Figure 1: Fusion Set that will contain the Use Anti Vishing feature

      2. Follow the steps in Sections 2.2-2.2.2 of this article to add the Use Anti Vishing feature to your Fusion Set via the Appdome Console.

      3. When you select the Use Anti Vishing you'll notice that the Fusion Set you created in step 2.1 now bears the icon of the protection category that contains Use Anti Vishing.

        Fusion Set applied Use Anti Vishing

        Figure 2: Fusion Set that displays the newly added Use Anti Vishing protection
        Note: Annotating the Fusion Set to identify the protection(s) selected is optional only (not mandatory).

      4. Open the Fusion Set Detail Summary by clicking the “...” symbol on the far-right corner of the Fusion Set. Copy the Fusion Set ID from the Fusion Set Detail Summary (as shown below): fusion Set Detail Summary image

        Figure 3: Fusion Set Detail Summary

      5. Follow the instructions below to use the Fusion Set ID inside any standard mobile DevOps or CI/CD toolkit like Bitrise, Jenkins, Travis, Team City, Circle CI or other system:
        1. Refer to the Appdome API Reference Guide for API building instructions.
        2. Look for sample APIs in Appdome’s GitHub Repository.
    1. Add the Use Anti Vishing feature to your security template.

      1. Navigate to Build > Anti ATO tab > Social Engineering Prevention section in the Appdome Console.
      2. Toggle On > Use Anti Vishing.

        (a) Choose to monitor this attack vector by checking the Threat Events checkbox associated with Use Anti Vishing as shown below.

        (b) To receive mobile Threat Monitoring, check the ThreatScope™ box as shown below. For more details, see our knowledge base article on ThreatScope™ Mobile XDR.
        Use Anti Vishing option

        Figure 4: Selecting Prevent Vishing

        Note: The Appdome Platform displays the Mobile Operation Systems supported by each defense in real-time. For more details, see our OS Support Policy KB.

      3. Select the Threat-Event™ in-app mobile Threat Defense and Intelligence policy for Use Anti Vishing:
        1. Threat-Events™ OFF > In-App Defense

          If the Threat-Events™ setting is not selected. Appdome will detect and defend the user and app by enforcing Vishing.

        2. Threat-Events™ ON > In-App Detection

          When this setting is used, Appdome detects if a call is taking place while an application is open on the mobile device and passes Appdome’s Threat-Event™ attack intelligence to the app’s business logic for processing, enforcement, and user notification. For more information on consuming and using Appdome Threat-Events™ in the app, see section Using Threat-Events™ to Use Anti VishingPrevent Intelligence and Control in Mobile Apps.

        3. Threat-Events™ ON > In-App Defense

          When this setting is used, Appdome detects and defends against Vishing (same as Appdome Enforce) and passes Appdome’s Threat-Event™ attack intelligence to the app’s business logic for processing. For more information on consuming and using Appdome Threat-Events™ in the app, see section Using Threat-Events™ for Use Anti VishingPrevent Intelligence and Control in Mobile Apps.

      4. Configure the User Experience Options for Use Anti Vishing:
        With Threat-Events™ OFF, Appdome provides several user experience options for mobile brands and developers.
        1. App Compromise Notification: Customize the pop-up or toast Appdome uses to notify the user when a threat is present while using the protected mobile app.
        2. Short message Option. This is available for mobile devices that allow a banner notification for security events.
        3. Localized Message Option. Allows Appdome users to support global languages in security notifications.

          Localized Message

          Figure 5: Default User Experience Options for Appdome’s Vishing

        4. Use Anti Vishing Threat Code™. Appdome uses AI/ML to generate a unique code each time Use Anti Vishing is triggered by an active threat on the mobile device. Use the code in Appdome Threat Resolution Center™ to help end users identify, find and resolve active threats on the personal mobile devices.
    2. Initiate the build command either by clicking Build My App at the bottom of the Build Workflow (shown in Figure 4) or via your CI/CD as described in Section 2.1.4.
    Congratulations!  The Use Anti Vishing protection is now added to the mobile app
  3. Certify the Use Anti Vishing feature in Mobile Apps

    After building Use Anti Vishing, Appdome generates a Certified Secure™ certificate to guarantee that the Use Anti Vishing protection has been added and is protecting the app. To verify that the Use Anti Vishing protection has been added to the mobile app, locate the protection in the Certified Secure™ certificate as shown below: Use Anti Vishing shown in Certificate secure

    Figure 6: Certified Secure™ certificate

    Each Certified Secure™ certificate provides DevOps and DevSecOps organizations the entire workflow summary, audit trail of each build, and proof of protection that Use Anti Vishing has been added to each Mobile app. Certified Secure provides instant and in-line DevSecOps compliance certification that Use Anti Vishing and other mobile app security features are in each build of the mobile app.

Using Threat-Events™ for Vishing Intelligence and Control in Mobile Apps

Appdome Threat-Events™ provides consumable in-app mobile app attack intelligence and defense control when Vishing is detected. To consume and use Threat-Events™ for Vishing in Mobile Apps, use AddObserverForName in Notification Center, and the code samples for Threat-Events™ for Vishing shown below.

The specifications and options for Threat-Events™ for Vishing are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Threat-Event™ Elements Prevent Vishing Method Detail
Appdome Feature Name Use Anti Vishing
Threat-Event Mode
OFF, IN-APP DEFENSE Appdome detects, defends and notifies user (standard OS dialog) using customizable messaging.
ON, IN-APP DETECTION Appdome detects the attack or threat and passes the event in a standard format to the app for processing (app chooses how and when to enforce).
ON, IN-APP DEFENSE Uses Appdome Enforce mode for any attack or threat and passes the event in a standard format to the app for processing (gather intel on attacks and threats without losing any protection).
Certified Secure™ Threat Event Check
Visible in ThreatScope™
Developer Parameters for Preventing Vishing Threat-Event™
Threat-Event NAME ActivePhoneCallDetected
Threat-Event DATA reasonData
Threat-Event CODE reasonCode
Threat-Event REF 6801
Threat-Event SCORE
currentThreatEventScore Current Threat-Event score
threatEventsScore Total Threat-events score
Threat-Event Context Keys
message Message displayed for the user on event
failSafeEnforce Timed enforcement against the identified threat
externalID The external ID of the event which can be listened via Threat Events
osVersion OS version of the current device
deviceModel Current device model
deviceManufacturer The manufacturer of the current device
fusedAppToken The task ID of the Appdome fusion of the currently running app
kernelInfo Info about the kernel: system name, node name, release, version and machine.
carrierPlmn PLMN of the device. Only available for Android devices.
deviceID Current device ID
reasonCode Reason code of the occurred event
buildDate Appdome fusion date of the current application
devicePlatform OS name of the current device
carrierName Carrier name of the current device. Only available for Android.
updatedOSVersion Is the OS version up to date
deviceBrand Brand of the device
deviceBoard Board of the device
buildUser Build user
buildHost Build host
sdkVersion Sdk version
timeZone Time zone
deviceFaceDown Is the device face down
locationLong Location longitude conditioned by location permission
locationLat Location latitude conditioned by location permission
locationState Location state conditioned by location permission
wifiSsid Wifi SSID
wifiSsidPermissionStatus Wifi SSID permission status
threatCode The last six characters of the threat code specify the OS, allowing the Threat Resolution Center to address the attack on the affected device.

With Threat-Events™ enabled (turned ON), Mobile developers can get detailed attack intelligence and granular defense control in Mobile applications and create amazing user experiences for all mobile end users when Vishing is detected.


The following is a code sample for native Mobile apps, which uses all values in the specification above for Use Anti Vishing:


Important! Replace all placeholder instances of <Context Key> with the specific name of your threat event context key across all language examples. This is crucial to ensure your code functions correctly with the intended event data. For example, The <Context Key> could be the message, externalID, OS Version, reason code, etc.



Using Appdome, there are no development or coding prerequisites to build secured Apps by using Use Anti Vishing. There is no SDK and no library to code or implement in the app and no gateway to deploy in your network. All protections are built into each app and the resulting app is self-defending and self-protecting.

Releasing and Publishing Mobile Apps with Use Anti Vishing

After successfully securing your app by using Appdome, there are several available options to complete your project, depending on your app lifecycle or workflow. These include:

Related Articles:

 

 

How Do I Learn More?

If you have any questions, please send them our way at support.appdome.com or via the chat window on the Appdome platform.

Thank you!

Thanks for visiting Appdome! Our mission is to secure every app on the planet by making mobile app security easy. We hope we’re living up to the mission with your project.

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