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> Even with the latest exploits free spreading viruses on android are rare but hook a windows machine up to the Internet without a router or firewall and get a

> Even with the latest exploits free spreading viruses on android are rare but hook a windows machine up to the Internet without a router or firewall and get a virus in seconds. I don't buy this at all. Unless you are comparing Android with Windows XP? First of all, you'd have to go out of your way to disable the firewall on a modern Windows install. Secondly, there have been tons of Android infections: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/virulent-auto-rooting-malware-takes-control-of-10-million-android-devices/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/virulent-auto-rootin... I'm sure the percentage is lower than "all infected Windows machines" but I very much doubt it's lower than "all Windows 10 installations" or even "all Windows XP SP2 + Windows 7 + Windows 10 installations with updates enabled". Nonetheless, it's definitely the case that an app sandboxing model provides some defence in depth, at the cost of reduced flexibility w.r.t. e.g. a real generic filesystem, ability to distribute/install without an app store, etc. The Windows Security Development Lifecycle material is worth reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Security_Development_Lifecycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Security_Development... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sdl/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sdl/ Ultimately, if you were to allow Android devices to by default, open and run arbitrary native code that users download from the internet, you'd see the same host of problems (probably much worse for the average Android device given the fragmented OS patching nightmare).

sqeaky 10y ago
>First of all, you'd have to go out of your way to disable the firewall on a modern Windows install. There is a screen that pops up everytime you plug in a network cable or connect to a wifi network for the first time. It asks what kind of network you are on, personal, work, public. Depending on what you answer here it does stuff to the firewall. Then there are the multitude of AV products that disable the firewall with their own suboptimal garbage. These wouldn't have been made if they weren't once necessary. Windows should have had a firewall when it got its own networking stack, but it went a couple of decades without one, so people got used to needing to add one. Even if that article is correct it is Android off of windows by an order of magnitude. > Ultimately, if you were to allow Android devices to by default, open and run arbitrary native code that users download from the internet But they aren't setup that way. That is part of why they are more secure.

sqeaky 10y ago

>First of all, you'd have to go out of your way to disable the firewall on a modern Windows install. There is a screen that pops up everytime you plug in a network cable or connect to a wifi network for the first time. It asks what kind of network you are on, personal, work, public. Depending on what you answer here it does stuff to the firewall. Then there are the multitude of AV products that disable the firewall with their own suboptimal garbage. These wouldn't have been made if they weren't once necessary. Windows should have had a firewall when it got its own networking stack, but it went a couple of decades without one, so people got used to needing to add one. Even if that article is correct it is Android off of windows by an order of magnitude. > Ultimately, if you were to allow Android devices to by default, open and run arbitrary native code that users download from the internet But they aren't setup that way. That is part of why they are more secure.