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Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

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Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#41
post #2

In case you don't feel like clicking, this doesn't concern Android apps, but OAuth apps that want access to your Google account.

It's also worth noting that this likely would stop phishing attacks like the one that happened earlier this year.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/3/15534768/google-docs-phish...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14258918

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#42
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is any web app that /you/ granted access to your Google account details (or a wider scope). If you don't want a web app to access your account, then don't grant access. It really is that simple. Now there's an extra step: Google's stamp of trust. I agree that for most web app this will be an extra formality. For me personally the key point is that there will be web apps that Google does not agree with from a bus…

I mean, I see this as a culmination of the response to the OAuth phishing attack that happened a few months ago [0]. Red flags should go up if you were accessing a site yesterday via OAuth, and all of a sudden today on the same site you get an angry full-page alert that "so-and-so wants your credentials, but they haven't been verified yet". I also noticed the presence of the domain name on the OAuth page, which certa…

> It's certainly worth acknowledging that even if users aren't truly blocked, they may be turned away from legitimate apps that just haven't gone through the review process yet -- too many extra clicks, concerns about the legitimacy of the app, whatever.

Perhaps it should have a "tell me when they're verified then" option.

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#43

I just can't shrug off the thought that manual review approach is a lost game in the long run. It's a process than requires skilled human and can't be fully automated while generating malicious code perfectly can.

But making legit apps does take human effort. If an app takes days to make, requiring 5 minutes extra review effort to get it whitelisted seems fine.

Only if similar numbers of people work on each side. With thousands or millions of developers to a handful of reviewers, it may go as well as Google's other attempts at human support (read: terrible).

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#44

I just can't shrug off the thought that manual review approach is a lost game in the long run. It's a process than requires skilled human and can't be fully automated while generating malicious code perfectly can.

You don't need to be that skilled, do you? Isn't this something you can train thousands of people to do over the course of a couple months?

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#45

I just can't shrug off the thought that manual review approach is a lost game in the long run. It's a process than requires skilled human and can't be fully automated while generating malicious code perfectly can.

I think of it in a different perspective: You combine humans and programmers to do better than each could do alone.

Start all-manual. Perhaps you only do it with a subsection of applications. Pay an extra fee and you get "certified" with special app placement. Then you start all-manual. You look for the people who are the best at finding issues, and pair them with programmers, and make the tools for the things that are gruntwork for them.

Build more and more tools, and you pull more and more people into the program as you build more and more intelligence into the machine.

Let the humans do the NP-hard portions. I'm sure this is what Apple has to be doing behind the scenes.

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#46
No point 0Auth apps if google has access to it. Rather pay for my e-mail service than to use google, whose source of revenue is directly in conflict with my interest of privacy and security.

I highly recommend protonemail.com. Has all the bells and whistles and its major feature is user privacy and security.

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#47

No point 0Auth apps if google has access to it. Rather pay for my e-mail service than to use google, whose source of revenue is directly in conflict with my interest of privacy and security. I highly recommend protonemail.com. Has all the bells and whistles and its major feature is user privacy and security.

I see that you don't use ProtonMail often.

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#48

I just can't shrug off the thought that manual review approach is a lost game in the long run. It's a process than requires skilled human and can't be fully automated while generating malicious code perfectly can.

It actually can be automated to a quite some degree. This is basically a something called expert system. You could create automated system to do these reviews from human reviewers and their expert domain knowledge. It might never be 100% accurate and might require human intervention from time to time but a high level of automation of this process can be achieved.

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#49

I just can't shrug off the thought that manual review approach is a lost game in the long run. It's a process than requires skilled human and can't be fully automated while generating malicious code perfectly can.

Current Machine Learning techniques rely on being trained by manually generated data. Google's virtual Assistant learned to understand voice because Google setup Google 411 and had millions of participants train it. Google developed OCR models by setting up Google reCAPTCHA and having millions of people train it.

Manual prompts to users are a great way to develop training data and being able to distribute them at scale to millions of users means you can develop training data in very short order.

Re: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

#50

I just can't shrug off the thought that manual review approach is a lost game in the long run. It's a process than requires skilled human and can't be fully automated while generating malicious code perfectly can.

On the contrary, the lack of human review is why both the Play Store and the Chrome Web Store (especially this one) are dumpster fires with rampant malware.

Automated tasks are not good at outsmarting humans. When you want to review a human's work for security, you need humans somewhere along the process.

Automation can help those humans do their jobs, but it's simply not a solution here.

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