5 ms·

With a response time like that it seems like antivirus software is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

• beatle 15y ago
  Meanwhile, critical Android security holes remain unpatched for more than 2 yrs.
  • jrockway 15y ago
    A real security hole, or one like "if someone watches you type your PIN code, they'll know your PIN code"?
    • Scaevolus 15y ago
      Security holes that render the permissions system completely useless, since even a no-permissions app can end up doing anything.
      • fpgeek 15y ago
        Do you have an example? The cases I've read about were of the form "app A asks app B to do something it can't via the Intent system". That sounds scary until you realize that a standard example of this is an app that can't access the network sharing something via email. In other words, app A has transferred control to app B and what the user does (or doesn't) decide to do with app B is their choice, not app A's.
        • jrockway 15y ago
          Indeed. Delegation via intents makes things more secure as broken code can be patched in one place rather than in many. And, you get tighter control over what apps can do: if you never want an app to share something via Facebook, simply uninstall the app that provides the "share via Facebook" intent.
          • fpgeek 15y ago
            Interesting point. Sometimes I find myself wanting to keep the app, but drop the intent. Usually that is to shorten a list, but not always. I'd love to see low-level intent-blocking (as well as low-level, fine-grained permissions blocking, but that's a whole other story).
• gcp 15y ago
  With exploits like that, it seems like sandboxing is becoming increasingly irrelevant. I don't think it's a good argument - what about defense in depth? Don't antivirus packages have heuristic protections? Or are those, in general, useless?
• fjarlq 15y ago
  A lot of computer viruses are spread by confused or ignorant people. It's not all about security holes....