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Two reasons: Apple's approval process and the paper trail. The approval process, while not guaranteed to catch malware, serves as a deterrent to evildoers beca
by tjogin 16y ago
Two reasons: Apple's approval process and the paper trail.
The approval process, while not guaranteed to catch malware, serves as a deterrent to evildoers because they know that at least some review will be made of their app, functionally as well as on an API-level.
There is a paper trail from each app to the developer responsible for it. When your app gets caught, you get caught.
It'd take a remarkably stupid evildoer to develop malware and submit it for Apple approval. It's less of a hassle and much less risky to be evil using other traditional channels, with no oversight; like exploiting browser bugs, building native programs that don't require neither the paper trail or an approval process (maybe masking as a "driver" or a "plugin" you need to watch some shady porn or whatever), spam, fraud and other schemes, etc.
For these reasons, it doesn't surprise me that we've seen no malware on iOS.
- blub 16y agoI know, that's why I said jailbroken iOS and Android. * Jailbroken users get their apps from third party sources and there are no more guarantees. * Android Market doesn't do malware checks (yet), and there was an issue with malware recently. Still, not even the AppStore is perfect: somone snuck in a tethering app disguised as a flashlight, if I remember correctly and there was a problem with a book vendor that was gaming the top lists.
- tjogin 16y agoRight, but neither of those hurt users, so not malware without stretching the definition of the word. I don't think malware on jailbroken iOS or Android happens much because most people who jailbreak are technically savvy. Also, they're a relatively tiny minority.
- theBobMcCormick 16y agoIf the App store approval process didn't catch a friggin tethering app disguised as a flashlight app, it seems highly unlikely it's gonna be any barrier to malware.
- tjogin 16y agoI never said that, not even anything close to it. If you read beyond the first sentence it should be pretty clear.