Pixel phones as secure as iPhones, claims Android head of security
“In the long term, the open ecosystem of Android is going to put it in a much better place,” said Ludwig in a short interview with Motherboard after this year’s O’Reilly Security Conference in New York.
According to Ludwig, these daily scans, coupled with Android’s built-in exploit prevention measures, leavesmeans only a “small number” of Android devices may have “Potentially Harmful Apps” installed on them. Pointing at last year’s “Stagefright” vulnerability — a fairly deep-rooted exploit in the OS, dating all the way back to Android 2.2 Froyo — Ludwig said his team is yet to see a real hack based on this exploit.
Android 6.0 Marshmallow was patched against Stagefright, but is currently installed on just shy of 19% of all active Android devices, 18.7% to be exact, leaving the vast majority still vulnerable. Without directly addressing the severe state of Android fragmentation, Ludwig acknowledged that there’s still a lot to be done to improve update and security patching cycles which are dependent on carriers and/or manufacturers.
“We got quite a bit of work left to do to get to a point where that actually happens on a regular basis across the whole the ecosystem,” Ludwig said.
source: Motherboard
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