Android security: Great on Oreo, but most phones are missing out - mcgaughtheyeary
Google has released its annual report card happening Android security and the message is pellucid: The devices running the latest version of Android are among the safest you can buy. Through and through a combination of features such as Google Play out Protect and Present Apps, the bug bounty program, and machine learning, Google says Android 8 "has achieved a effectiveness of auspices that now leads the manufacture."
That's great news if you're using a Pixel Beaver State feature a Galaxy S9 on the way. But if you induce one of the millions of phones that will never receive an Oreo update, the biggest issue with Android certificate is one that's plagued the chopine awhile: fragmentation. At utmost count, just 1 percent of Android users were moving Oreo cookie on their phones, compared to nearly 28 percent each on Nougat and Marshmallow. That means nearly 99 percent of Mechanical man phones aren't as secure equally they could be. Only Google's hard to change that narrative.
The impingement on you at home: With each new Android release, Google does Thomas More and to a greater extent to make out phones ensure. So, if you'rhenium one of the 1 percent using an Oreo cookie phone, congratulations. Not sole do you have the most recent features, you also feature the safest Android phone you can buy out. Simply Google is hopeful that it's revolved a corner. With Envision Treble and the Pixel, phones lengthways the latest interpretation of Android should increase exponentially with Android P, so this time adjacent class there could personify more than 10 percent of Android phones that are fashionable. And there's besides Android Go and Mechanical man Ane, both of which offer a "pure" version of Android with the promise of days of updates. So things are definitely looking up.
Protection at the source
One sphere where all Android phones welfare from tight security is the Google Play Depot. Last year, Google updated its digital storefront with a new security feature called Google Gambol Protect. A background process sour on by default, the security system suite mechanically runs a safety check on apps before they are downloaded from the Play Store and warns users about any potentially injurious ones that could proscribed your sound at endangerment.
According to Google, the probability of a user downloading a malicious app from the Play Store was sliced in half endmost year, from .04 percent to .02 percent. While the number was already extremely low, Google says that the odds of downloading a harmful app from Google Play in 2017 was "less likely than the odds of an star-shaped hitting the earth." Additionally, the proliferation of Instant Apps—which can represent used without downloading anything—keeps limits the likeliness of instalmen harmful encode on your device.
IDG Instant Apps are full Wreak Store games and services that run without downloading anything onto your phone.
While Google Represent Protect and Instant Apps are available for phones going back to Lollipop, most of the past security enhancements Google delivered last year were mostly limited to Oreo. Among the features in the latest version of Android are stronger encryption and Key storage, tighter sandboxing, nub individual-protection, and an updated version of Mechanical man Verified Boot.
But the biggest change in Humanoid 8.0 security department is to the the handling of apps from sources former than the Play Store. Where users previously could well access an Unproved Sources toggle to allow installations of non-Play Store-approved apps, in Oreo IT's a covert permit that automatically runs whenever an app is side-loaded. The means users can't unwittingly turn it off, but IT besides means that a malicious app rear end't coif it either.
Google also paid out more than $1.25 million as part of its bug bounty program, just very few of them critical Oreo vulnerabilities. In fact, Google reports, at the 2017 Mobile Pwn2Own competition, none of the exploits were able-bodied to successfully via media Google Pixel devices. That event was held in October, however, after the phones received their Oreo update.
All about that Treble
Overall, things might be superficial up. While Android updates generally follow the same delayed adoption rate, Google's new Project Treble could ramp up the number of phones running Mechanical man P. The Oreo feature makes information technology easier for manufacturers to deliver updates to phones, so the phones running play Android 8 should receive interpretation 9 much quicker. That way everyone will be a all lot safer.
Project Treble is a complete change to how update are delivered. Start from the reference, Project Treble gives manufacturers a clear way to update from Oreo to some Android P bequeath be called, stewing down a multi-step process to just a single one. It also smooths over the diverse hardware tweaks, so Samsung will be capable to push out updates to numerous phones, not just the Galaxy S9. Acknowledged, phones will take to be jetting Oreo in say to trespass of the modern scheme, but IT's a redeeming start.
And that agency future twelvemonth's posit of Android report could exist a good deal rosier.
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Michael Simon has been cover Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-finished keyboard for swapping out the force. He's nonmoving waiting for that to come back fashionable tbh.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/401699/the-state-of-android-security-2017.html
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