Case Study: Uncovering a Critical Vulnerability in a Life Insurance App That Compromised User Privacy Through Exposed Sensitive Data and Live Activity

This case study reports a security lapse in a life insurance mobile application discovered via CloudSEK's SVigil: a hardcoded IP address pointing to an internal, unauthenticated MQTT server allows attackers to access real-time device snapshots, user activity, transaction details, and personally identifiable information (PII). The report outlines the attack steps, impact on agents and users, and remediation recommendations including removing hardcoded IPs, enforcing MQTT authentication and encryption, restricting screen-sharing permissions, and performing regular security audits.