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Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

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Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#11

Post by ______- »

My smartphone is a simple affair. I have a hardened Firefox as my default browser (uBlock Origin with JS disabled by default with HTTPS-Everywhere addon with EASE turned on).

I keep my app-count to a minimum. There are people who need every app imaginable, but that increases the attack surface of the phone. Try to minimize the amount of apps on your phone please!

Then of course all the usual OPSEC practices like not clicking on suspicious links in Whatsapp, E-mail or SMS always apply. You have to consider the human element of all this. So many people have been owned by fat-fingering some suspicious link in an SMS that then took over their phone.

But there is always the argument that: phones ship with malware anyway so you're pwned either way.

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#12

Post by pwdisswordfish0 »

toast0 wrote: post #5
smiley1437 wrote: post #2

I dont LOVE walled gardens but has there been any exposure of this scale in IOS devices?

Apple doesn't have a spotless record with security. However, they are significantly better at pushing updates. A large majority of eligible iOS devices install OS updates, and iOS devices tend to be eligible for updates for many years. Additionally, because sales are much lower for iOS than Android, it's hard to get to the same scale. I don't know about iPad numbers, but 1 billion iPhones is about 5 years of sales, a…

The 5s received iOS 12.5.1 in January, it was released Autumn 2013

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#14

Post by gord288 »

toast0 wrote: post #5
smiley1437 wrote: post #2

I dont LOVE walled gardens but has there been any exposure of this scale in IOS devices?

Apple doesn't have a spotless record with security. However, they are significantly better at pushing updates. A large majority of eligible iOS devices install OS updates, and iOS devices tend to be eligible for updates for many years. Additionally, because sales are much lower for iOS than Android, it's hard to get to the same scale. I don't know about iPad numbers, but 1 billion iPhones is about 5 years of sales, a…

Just a few days ago, Apple issued a security update (iOS 12.5.3) for the iPhone 5s, a phone that first came out in Sept. 2013. Not bad huh?

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#15

Post by ryanmarsh »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #10
Proven wrote: post #9

The duration and quality of security updates/fixes is roughly commesurate with the price users paid for the s/w part of their mobile devices. That's pretty cool - you can pay almost nothing for the s/w and still get a phone that works.

Alternatively, i bought my Google phone for 1000 dollars 3 years ago and get zero updates now. That's pretty sorry.

Kind of ironic that 3 year old chrome books cost less and still get updates.

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#16

Post by sumtechguy »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #10
Proven wrote: post #9

The duration and quality of security updates/fixes is roughly commesurate with the price users paid for the s/w part of their mobile devices. That's pretty cool - you can pay almost nothing for the s/w and still get a phone that works.

Alternatively, i bought my Google phone for 1000 dollars 3 years ago and get zero updates now. That's pretty sorry.

What is even more sorry is if you had bought a 100 dollar phone you could have bought a new phone every year for 10 years and had better protection. Which is totally wasteful.

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#17

Post by dmitrygr »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #15
lambda_obrien wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, i bought my Google phone for 1000 dollars 3 years ago and get zero updates now. That's pretty sorry.

Kind of ironic that 3 year old chrome books cost less and still get updates.

I worked in both Android and ChromeOS orgs at Google. They way the leadership in each treated updates was very different.

ChromeOS devices are expected to be supported for 7 (or so) years. This is true even at the planning stage, which is why certain vendors are avoided as they cannot be reliably expected to provide support for that. There used to be a policy even that only upstreamed kernels can be shipped, as in: if the vendor does not upstream their kernel patches, no part of theirs can be in a ChromeOS device.

Very little thought about updateability was given in Android until about 2018(?)-ish, when project Treble started happening. And even then, that idea had existed for a while before it was implemented, and it took a long time to sell android leadership on it.

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#19

Post by GeekyBear »

toast0 wrote: post #5
smiley1437 wrote: post #2

I dont LOVE walled gardens but has there been any exposure of this scale in IOS devices?

Apple doesn't have a spotless record with security. However, they are significantly better at pushing updates. A large majority of eligible iOS devices install OS updates, and iOS devices tend to be eligible for updates for many years. Additionally, because sales are much lower for iOS than Android, it's hard to get to the same scale. I don't know about iPad numbers, but 1 billion iPhones is about 5 years of sales, a…

> that combines with other factors and very few devices make it past five years of use

The original version of the iPhone SE and the iPhone 6s are six years old now.

They run the current version of iOS and still work just fine.

Re: Android Devices Are at Risk of Data Theft (2020)

#20

Post by Saris »

smiley1437 wrote: post #2

I dont LOVE walled gardens but has there been any exposure of this scale in IOS devices?

I wonder how much of it is due to a walled garden, and how much of it is due to iOS devices getting security updates.

It seems like even expensive flagship android devices get a year or maybe 2 of updates now and then you're just left on your own.

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