Who Moved My Transaction? Uncovering Post-Transaction Auditability Vulnerabilities in Modern Super Apps

TL;DR

Super apps often lack robust post-transaction audit protections, allowing users to delete transaction histories without strong authentication, which poses significant security risks and undermines transaction accountability.

Contribution

This paper uncovers a widespread vulnerability in super apps where transaction records can be deleted without proper authentication, highlighting a critical security gap.

Findings

All six super apps studied allow transaction deletion.

Five out of six apps lack strong authentication for deletion.

Only one app used biometric verification for deleting records.

Abstract

Super apps are the cornerstones of modern digital life, embedding financial transactions into nearly every aspect of daily routine. The prevailing security paradigm for these platforms is overwhelmingly focused on pre-transaction authentication, preventing unauthorized payments before they occur. We argue that a critical vulnerability vector has been largely overlooked: the fragility of post-transaction audit trails. We investigate the ease with which a user can permanently erase their transaction history from an app's interface, thereby concealing unauthorized or sensitive activities from the account owner. To quantify this threat, we conducted an empirical study with 6 volunteers who performed a cross-evaluation on six super apps. Our findings are alarming: all six applications studied allow users to delete transaction records, yet a staggering five out of six (83+\%) fail to protect these records with strong authentication. Only one app in our study required biometric verification for deletion. This study provides the first concrete evidence of this near-ubiquitous vulnerability, demonstrating a critical gap in the current mobile security landscape and underscoring the urgent need for a paradigm shift towards ensuring post-transaction audit integrity.