Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 417 posts

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#321

Post by andybak »

ino wrote: post #306
oefrha wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing Google's blog post for Android security is not very convincing. If Android is so secure, why are we seeing (often more frequently than) weekly headlines on Android security woes, often containing something like "millions of devices affected" (and often enough, no fix in sight)? Also, quote from linked blog post: > only 0.05 percent of devices that downloaded apps exclusively from Play contained a PHA. 1. What…

> 1. What percentage of Android devices download apps exclusively from Play? The entirety of China doesn't even have Google Play Store.

That's hardly Google's fault.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#322

Post by bitmapbrother »

oefrha wrote: post #279
chickenbane wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should have started on it years ago As somebody who has been following Android for a while, this statement is incredibly unfair. The Android ecosystem is huge and remarkably safe. For those actually interested in the details, the Android security team releases annual security reviews, and the report for 2016 was just released: https://security.googleblog.com/2017/03/diverse-protections-... The tldr: the number…

Citing Google's blog post for Android security is not very convincing. If Android is so secure, why are we seeing (often more frequently than) weekly headlines on Android security woes, often containing something like "millions of devices affected" (and often enough, no fix in sight)? Also, quote from linked blog post: > only 0.05 percent of devices that downloaded apps exclusively from Play contained a PHA. 1. What…

>Citing Google's blog post for Android security is not very convincing.

So instead of believing metrics gathered from Google's SafetyNet telemetry from 1.4 billion devices you would rather believe scaremongering blog posts that have no concrete data to back up their claims?

>If Android is so secure, why are we seeing (often more frequently than) weekly headlines on Android security woes, often containing something like "millions of devices affected" (and often enough, no fix in sight)?

Do you really think it's that easy to exploit an Android phone? Once you have an exploit you must then chain it with other exploits to get around all of the Android security mitigation's in place. And then there's the fact that every OEM creates their own version of Android so not every exploit will work on every device or OS version - you can thank device and OS fragmentation for that one.

So this is why bugs like Stagefright never panned out to be the security armageddon that these click bait blog sites all wanted you to believe. Just because an exploit is discovered doesn't really mean it's being exploited in the wild.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#323

Post by bitmapbrother »

oefrha wrote: post #308
pillowkusis wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>weekly headlines on Android security woes stagefright is the last major Android vulnerability I'm aware of. Do you have sources for these? In my experience it's far less than weekly. Maybe yearly at most.

I could be exaggerating a little bit, but do check https://arstechnica.com/security/ .

And where is your proof that Stagefright is actively being exploited? All you did was point to a scaremongering blog post with no data.

According to Adrian Ludwig, Android security director, not 1 Stagefright exploit has ever been seen in the wild according to the telemetry they receive from SafetyNet and the 1.4 billion devices it's installed on.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#324

Post by [deleted] »

pjmlp wrote: post #291
chickenbane wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should have started on it years ago As somebody who has been following Android for a while, this statement is incredibly unfair. The Android ecosystem is huge and remarkably safe. For those actually interested in the details, the Android security team releases annual security reviews, and the report for 2016 was just released: https://security.googleblog.com/2017/03/diverse-protections-... The tldr: the number…

You mean the same report where they cleverly omit the actual situation about updates across Android devices, by only mentioning flagship devices sold in 2016?

[deleted]

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#325

Post by throwaway91111 »

_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

Is that really google's problem, though? Why do you think they have a responsibility to ensure their OEM clients update regularly? It doesn't reflect poorly on them; it reflects poorly on samsung, sony, etc etc, who fill their phones with crap ware and are slow with patches and upgrades.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#326

Post by flukus »

digi_owl wrote: post #206
narrator wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devil's advocate: Windows became the dominant platform when it had terrible security. Android became the dominant platform when it had terrible security. Maybe people don't care that much about security vs other features. At it's low point, Windows security was a lot worse than Android security. At one point, a fresh Windows XP machine plugged into the Internet would be compromised within a couple of min…

Seems to me that Android had better security from the outset than (consumer) Windows had. It was not until XP that most home computers even had a notion of multiple users in any real sense, thanks to the NT core. And i don't think the problem is so much that people do not value security, but that they approach a computer like it is an appliance. Meaning that they do not internalize that it can do things without them…

> Seems to me that Android had better security from the outset than (consumer) Windows had.

It does, but it's also operating in a much more hostile environment. At least windows had regular updates though, that's not the case for most android phones.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#327

Post by lawnchair_larry »

pjmlp wrote: post #82
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't have 1 security team. Project Zero has nothing to do with Android whatsoever. Totally different parts of the business.

But they surely have an Android Security one, which tends to ignore the issue with updates on their reports. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/03/android-se... Apparently now all OEMs are playing nice with updates and everyone that bought a phone in 2016 got their updates.

Sure, perhaps you could make a case for calling out the Android security team. GP didn't do that though, he called out Project Zero for not leaving Microsoft alone and instead fixing Android. I'm just saying, that isn't how things work.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#328

Post by badminton1 »

_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

Let's see...

Taking over a machine thanks to autorun.inf, crashing machines with ping, unsecured shared folders, worms spreading everywhere, rendering fonts on kernel code, and a long list of other stupid defects... No. Android has never included this level of idiocy therefore it is not fair to hold it to the same standard.

Installing Windows was once the same as installing a rootkit in your computer. Android might have issues but never as bad as Windows. Windows holds all the incompetency records.

Then, "the operating system released 16 years ago" (Windows XP) is the 3rd most used operating system. It is still causing problems today.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#329

Post by bitJericho »

_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

And here I am on the Nokia 930 windows phone running Windows 10, and still expecting more updates :)

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#330

Post by qzervaas »

chickenbane wrote: post #260
_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

> you should have started on it years ago As somebody who has been following Android for a while, this statement is incredibly unfair. The Android ecosystem is huge and remarkably safe. For those actually interested in the details, the Android security team releases annual security reviews, and the report for 2016 was just released: https://security.googleblog.com/2017/03/diverse-protections-... The tldr: the number…

Wait a minute - users were requesting for years that Google change the permissions model of the Play Store from upfront to runtime permissions (like iOS does).

Google constantly shot that down and said how it works (agree to everything before downloading) was intentional and expected behaviour. They have finally changed that model now, but in my opinion this was pretty inexcusable and reckless.

I was unable to find the issue in the Android bug tracker now, but it's a pretty long thread.

Post reply on HN