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Only problem is that I don't know of anyone that examines that list of permissions, and will reject an app if those permissions seem to much. How is a regular

by derekp7 13y ago

Only problem is that I don't know of anyone that examines that list of permissions, and will reject an app if those permissions seem to much. How is a regular user to know if it is bad for an app to access your phone book, or internet connection? Depending on the app, this may be necessary for the app to function. Or for it to serve ads. What is needed, is for trusted third parties to verify if a given list of permissions is needed, and give (via a security software add-on) a popup with an assessment of how safe it is to install that app -- green, yellow, or red, for example. That is about the only thing that most end users (and even busy geeks) can really comprehend.

ufmace 13y ago
There's at least some truth to that, but that's the point that I was trying to get to. GP claims that "Computer science solved this problem decades ago" in reference to capability-based security. Android is the only OS that I'm aware of implementing anything like that on a mass scale, and while security there has proven to be at least decent, I'd hardly call it a solved problem. Capability-based security is ultimately just another buzzword, no more of a perfect solution than any of the others. I don't think you can call any type of security problem solved by your pet technology until it is deployed at scale in the real world and proven to work. Until you have had tens of millions of users and hundreds of thousands of developers bashing away at it for years, you just don't know if you've really solved the problem. Android's capability-based security is good, but IMHO the more important security innovation is secure app-specific data stores. You might request more permissions than you should, and some clueless users might install it anyways, but you still can't ever get access to the data or credentials stored by the banking app, the social media app, etc.
- derekp7 13y ago
  Ah, so instead of asking the user for permission to access something, an app also would need another app's permission to access that data. Of course, this has already been pioneered by companies implementing DRM, but still, I wonder how this can be implemented in a general sense.
  - ufmace 13y ago
    Er, what I meant is that Android already does this. All apps' data stores are private to that app by default. The only way for any other app to access them is for the owning app to specifically set up an interface and permissions to access it, and the accessing app to request those permissions at install time. I don't have much experience with iOS, but I expect it does something similar.
- willvarfar 13y ago
  Symbian and iOS had/have data caging; apps can't see each others data.
Swannie 13y ago
I'm not consistent with this, but I do reject games from things like "Developer file system access" - WTF does a game need with that? The challenge is more widely used apps that ask for permissions that make no sense to me as a developer. App developers should be able to provide a justification for each permission. Ideally I'd like to be able to reject specific permissions, and the app should just tell me what functions are disabled... or I'll take my own risks. Basically, IMHO, Android permissions is almost as broken as UAC in Windows, with all but a very small % of people actually reading and bothering to understand application permission requests.

by derekp7 13y ago

ufmace 13y ago

There's at least some truth to that, but that's the point that I was trying to get to. GP claims that "Computer science solved this problem decades ago" in reference to capability-based security. Android is the only OS that I'm aware of implementing anything like that on a mass scale, and while security there has proven to be at least decent, I'd hardly call it a solved problem. Capability-based security is ultimately just another buzzword, no more of a perfect solution than any of the others. I don't think you can call any type of security problem solved by your pet technology until it is deployed at scale in the real world and proven to work. Until you have had tens of millions of users and hundreds of thousands of developers bashing away at it for years, you just don't know if you've really solved the problem. Android's capability-based security is good, but IMHO the more important security innovation is secure app-specific data stores. You might request more permissions than you should, and some clueless users might install it anyways, but you still can't ever get access to the data or credentials stored by the banking app, the social media app, etc.

derekp7 13y ago
Ah, so instead of asking the user for permission to access something, an app also would need another app's permission to access that data. Of course, this has already been pioneered by companies implementing DRM, but still, I wonder how this can be implemented in a general sense.
- ufmace 13y ago
  Er, what I meant is that Android already does this. All apps' data stores are private to that app by default. The only way for any other app to access them is for the owning app to specifically set up an interface and permissions to access it, and the accessing app to request those permissions at install time. I don't have much experience with iOS, but I expect it does something similar.
willvarfar 13y ago
Symbian and iOS had/have data caging; apps can't see each others data.

Swannie 13y ago

I'm not consistent with this, but I do reject games from things like "Developer file system access" - WTF does a game need with that? The challenge is more widely used apps that ask for permissions that make no sense to me as a developer. App developers should be able to provide a justification for each permission. Ideally I'd like to be able to reject specific permissions, and the app should just tell me what functions are disabled... or I'll take my own risks. Basically, IMHO, Android permissions is almost as broken as UAC in Windows, with all but a very small % of people actually reading and bothering to understand application permission requests.