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It is your assumption that the perceived threat is a 'nation-state', not mine. Personally I'm not to worried about them and I'm more concerned with advertisers

It is your assumption that the perceived threat is a 'nation-state', not mine. Personally I'm not to worried about them and I'm more concerned with advertisers and data brokers. Let's take that brief dig into those 'malware' reports, shall we? Here's one from the Wall Street Journal[0] from last year. Some choice quotes: "Security-software maker Avast called out a trio of malicious Android apps that were, until recently, available in the Google Play app store. The apps would go into sinister mode after 30 days on a device, and begin spamming users with advertisements, Avast said in a company blog post. Google told the Journal that, as of now, the infected apps have been pulled from Google Play." "For those who had the apps installed on their phones for more than 30 days, a threatening ad would pop up each time they unlocked their phone, saying the device was out of memory, experiencing a security hole or some other false claim, Avast said. The pop-ups would then route people to websites where more malware could be installed on devices, said the security company. Anyone with either of the known apps installed should delete them immediately." Do we blame the users since the apps informed them about permissions? I've read and understood the same things you have, and reached a diametrically opposite conclusion. Maybe this is because I am also taking into account Android's severe updates problem, which is typically left to the carriers and handset makers to implement. Carriers and handset makers want to sell new phones, not patch old ones, who didn't see that one coming? Good on Google for patching Android security holes, too bad they don't reach the majority of users. I'm sticking to my original view and I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. [0]http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2015/02/04/android-malware-removed-from-google-play-store-after-millions-of-downloads/ http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2015/02/04/android-...

simoncion 10y ago
> It is your assumption that the perceived threat is a 'nation-state'... ... That was the opening sentence of my paragraph that demonstrated that there is no such thing as "guaranteed security". If you think that there is such a thing, then you're going to be confused about many things when you think about security matters. To the rest of your comment: You need to keep things in perspective. [0] * On Windows, Mac, and Linux malware can read and write to anything that the user who installed it has access to. It can read what other programs have stuffed in to RAM... including your password manager's temporarily decrypted passwords. It can often record and exfiltrate the contents of one's screen and the output of one's microphone. It can often install keyloggers that capture banking, email, and other credentials. It can often encrypt personal data, lock the computer, send the computer user a friendly ransom note, and then decrypt that data once payment is received. Unless the malware is ransomware, it can do all this without ever notifying the computer user. * On Android and iOS, malware can do exactly what the pre-installation permissions list says it can. Malware cannot read or write to data for which it does not have permission to read or modify. For instance, malware cannot be a keylogger unless it requests the replace system keyboard equivalent permission. For Android malware to read what other programs have stuffed into RAM, it -effectively- has to be authored and signed by Google and baked into the system image. * Are you old enough to remember popup web advertising? Because (other than the platform) that's exactly what the section you quoted from that article is talking about. In the PC world, popups are called "annoying" rather than "malware". Is the permissions system good? No. However, it's dramatically better than what you get in the PC world. Remember that Signal is software that is intended for rather secure communications. Signal's threat model [1] requires that other programs running on the system be unable to tamper with the data that Signal puts into RAM and on to disk. You can get those properties with a PC, but so many non-technical users' PCs have been hit with real malware ages ago that that's kind of a lost cause. Actual "take over your computer" malware doesn't exist in either the Play Store or the App Store. This is really good for the average computer [2] user. > Maybe this is because I am also taking into account Android's severe updates problem... Wot? Other than the ~3 year update window problem, this hasn't been a wide-spread problem [3] since Google put critical system stuff in the Google Play Services package (rather than baked into the system image) ages ago. > I've read and understood the same things you have... Read? Maybe. Understood? Clearly not. I hope that you'll take the presence of strong differing opinions backed up by sound reasoning and hard facts as a signal that some of your fundamental assumptions about the topic are incorrect. [0] Indeed, maintaining perspective is a significant part of talking about security issues. [1] Learn what that means if you don't already know. [2] Mobile or otherwise. [3] Yes, you can point to abandoned phones. I can point to people with missing limbs, but that neither means that the majority of people are missing limbs nor does it mean that there's a severe missing limb problem in the human population. :)
- tombrossman 10y ago
  At issue further up the thread was whether insisting on using Google Play to distribute Signal for security reasons was sound logic, right? Forgive me if I missed the point but I thought that's what we were debating. That's why I provided the specific example above which showed malware distributed via the Google Play store. this advanced my position that an app insisting on distribution via Google Play store exclusively is not automatically more secure than alternative distribution methods. What part of your response above advances your counter-argument please? The closest you came was saying that "Actual "take over your computer" malware doesn't exist in either the Play Store or the App Store." but this is directly contradicted by this story from just yesterday: http://www.slashgear.com/viking-horde-malware-uses-google-play-store-to-infect-android-devices-10439576/ http://www.slashgear.com/viking-horde-malware-uses-google-pl... (plenty of other sites covering this too) I'm also unclear about missing limbs being somehow analogous to 'abandoned' phones. Let's set that aside and have a look at this chart on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history Can you look at that and still say that updates are not a wide-spread problem? It links to sources and indicates to me that most Android phones are not using a current version with up-to-date security patches. Do you disagree? I've stated from the beginning that I disagree that distribution via Google Play is any guarantee of security and provided links to specific examples of malware in the Google Play store as evidence that Google Play has repeatedly been used to distribute malware to many millions of devices. Can you rebut this? As an aside, I'm reading your reply and I'm thinking to myself "If someone needed a comprehensive 'how-to' for a straw man argument then this one is pretty good". Also please consider that popups were a real problem as late as the early 2000's. That means you must be thinking I am in my early teens, if I am to take your "Are you old enough to remember popup web advertising?" comment at face value. I have to say it isn't helping to persuade me, and is having the opposite effect.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    So your point is that the Play store isn't perfect at stopping malware and that negates all benefits over just installing random unsigned APKs? Besides, Moxie's point is that the store installs what he signs and nothing else. Perhaps the system wouldn't catch malware but if it prevents people from running builds he didn't make it sure lessens the window of opportunity.

simoncion 10y ago

> It is your assumption that the perceived threat is a 'nation-state'... ... That was the opening sentence of my paragraph that demonstrated that there is no such thing as "guaranteed security". If you think that there is such a thing, then you're going to be confused about many things when you think about security matters. To the rest of your comment: You need to keep things in perspective. [0] * On Windows, Mac, and Linux malware can read and write to anything that the user who installed it has access to. It can read what other programs have stuffed in to RAM... including your password manager's temporarily decrypted passwords. It can often record and exfiltrate the contents of one's screen and the output of one's microphone. It can often install keyloggers that capture banking, email, and other credentials. It can often encrypt personal data, lock the computer, send the computer user a friendly ransom note, and then decrypt that data once payment is received. Unless the malware is ransomware, it can do all this without ever notifying the computer user. * On Android and iOS, malware can do exactly what the pre-installation permissions list says it can. Malware cannot read or write to data for which it does not have permission to read or modify. For instance, malware cannot be a keylogger unless it requests the replace system keyboard equivalent permission. For Android malware to read what other programs have stuffed into RAM, it -effectively- has to be authored and signed by Google and baked into the system image. * Are you old enough to remember popup web advertising? Because (other than the platform) that's exactly what the section you quoted from that article is talking about. In the PC world, popups are called "annoying" rather than "malware". Is the permissions system good? No. However, it's dramatically better than what you get in the PC world. Remember that Signal is software that is intended for rather secure communications. Signal's threat model [1] requires that other programs running on the system be unable to tamper with the data that Signal puts into RAM and on to disk. You can get those properties with a PC, but so many non-technical users' PCs have been hit with real malware ages ago that that's kind of a lost cause. Actual "take over your computer" malware doesn't exist in either the Play Store or the App Store. This is really good for the average computer [2] user. > Maybe this is because I am also taking into account Android's severe updates problem... Wot? Other than the ~3 year update window problem, this hasn't been a wide-spread problem [3] since Google put critical system stuff in the Google Play Services package (rather than baked into the system image) ages ago. > I've read and understood the same things you have... Read? Maybe. Understood? Clearly not. I hope that you'll take the presence of strong differing opinions backed up by sound reasoning and hard facts as a signal that some of your fundamental assumptions about the topic are incorrect. [0] Indeed, maintaining perspective is a significant part of talking about security issues. [1] Learn what that means if you don't already know. [2] Mobile or otherwise. [3] Yes, you can point to abandoned phones. I can point to people with missing limbs, but that neither means that the majority of people are missing limbs nor does it mean that there's a severe missing limb problem in the human population. :)

tombrossman 10y ago
At issue further up the thread was whether insisting on using Google Play to distribute Signal for security reasons was sound logic, right? Forgive me if I missed the point but I thought that's what we were debating. That's why I provided the specific example above which showed malware distributed via the Google Play store. this advanced my position that an app insisting on distribution via Google Play store exclusively is not automatically more secure than alternative distribution methods. What part of your response above advances your counter-argument please? The closest you came was saying that "Actual "take over your computer" malware doesn't exist in either the Play Store or the App Store." but this is directly contradicted by this story from just yesterday: http://www.slashgear.com/viking-horde-malware-uses-google-play-store-to-infect-android-devices-10439576/ http://www.slashgear.com/viking-horde-malware-uses-google-pl... (plenty of other sites covering this too) I'm also unclear about missing limbs being somehow analogous to 'abandoned' phones. Let's set that aside and have a look at this chart on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history Can you look at that and still say that updates are not a wide-spread problem? It links to sources and indicates to me that most Android phones are not using a current version with up-to-date security patches. Do you disagree? I've stated from the beginning that I disagree that distribution via Google Play is any guarantee of security and provided links to specific examples of malware in the Google Play store as evidence that Google Play has repeatedly been used to distribute malware to many millions of devices. Can you rebut this? As an aside, I'm reading your reply and I'm thinking to myself "If someone needed a comprehensive 'how-to' for a straw man argument then this one is pretty good". Also please consider that popups were a real problem as late as the early 2000's. That means you must be thinking I am in my early teens, if I am to take your "Are you old enough to remember popup web advertising?" comment at face value. I have to say it isn't helping to persuade me, and is having the opposite effect.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  So your point is that the Play store isn't perfect at stopping malware and that negates all benefits over just installing random unsigned APKs? Besides, Moxie's point is that the store installs what he signs and nothing else. Perhaps the system wouldn't catch malware but if it prevents people from running builds he didn't make it sure lessens the window of opportunity.