Tuesday 30 July 2013

how Google made 95% of all Android devices more secure

Before we have a tendency to dive right into this one, lets have a fast recap. With Android's reach currently closing in on a billion active devices worldwide, robot malware has been an even bigger concern than ever. 

With the most recent therefore referred to as “Master Key” exploit attracting widespread attention, Google had to act fast, and it extremely did. It issued a patch that took care of the vulnerability to its OEM partners, and patched the Play Store rapidly. drawback solved , right? roughly, as you almost certainly thought. Despite Google's best intentions, OEMs square measure ill-famed for his or her slow update cycles, and there was no telling specifically once the vital mass of robot devices would be protected against a threat that was already spreading within the wild. 

Fortunately for everyone concerned, word has gotten out that Google has, in a very sensible move, bolstered the safety of some ninety fifth of devices out there, and here's however. keep in mind Bouncer? It's Google's watchdog overseeing the safety of its proprietor's Play Store. Well, with robot four.2, Google introduced a number of the practicality of guard and referred to as it Verify Apps. The new service would await every and each app that you just transfer notwithstanding its supply – be it the initial app store or a side-loaded app from a third-party store – and guard you against attacks.

So wherever will that ninety fifth figure come back from? consistent with ComputerWorld, Google has created the Verify Apps service a locality of the whole Google Play Services package (think Gmail, Maps and Youtube), and it's offered for each single device running robot a pair of.3 cake and on top of. Or concerning ninety fifth of all robot devices, consistent with Google's own stats.

"We needed to create certain those protections were offered even for users UN agency were selecting to put in applications from a supply apart from Google Play," robot Security Engineer Adrian Ludwig told ComputerWorld. "It's perpetually been a spotlight for robot to create certain that we're supporting Associate in Nursing open system which it's doable for users to induce applications that developers, for any range of reasons, are not distributing through [the official Play Store channel]."

The ramifications of this square measure large, folks! By deconstructing robot during this method, Google are going to be able to skip the glacier-slow OEMs and be able to issue security updates for the most part on its own. With this, and also the recently unearthed “Apps Ops” feature creating its debut in robot four.3, Google extremely appears to possess stepped up its game in terms of security, and we are the happier for it.

source: ComputerWorld

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