- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
It’s a common assumption among tech geeks, and even cybersecurity experts, that if you are really paranoid, you should probably use an iPhone, and not Android. But the man responsible for securing the more than one billion Android users on the planet vehemently disagrees—but of course he would.
“For almost all threat models,” Adrian Ludwig, the director of security at Android, referring to the level of security needed by most people, “they are nearly identical in terms of their platform-level capabilities.”
In a short interview after a talk at a security conference in Manhattan on Tuesday the talk, Ludwig said that, “for sure,” there’s no doubt that a Google Pixel and an iPhone are pretty much equal when it comes to security. Android, he added, will soon be better though.
“In the long term, the open ecosystem of Android is going to put it in a much better place,” he said, without mentioning that Android has already been around for more than eight years at this point.
During his talk at the O’Reilly Security Conference Ludwig said that Android’s built-in security product called “Safety Net” scans 400 million devices per day and checks a stunning 6 billions apps per day.
The result of these security checks, coupled with the exploit mitigation measures baked into Android, mean that a really small number of Android devices has malware or, as Google calls it, “Potentially Harmful Applications” or PHAs, according to Ludwig. In fact, Ludwig said showing a graph, less than 1% of Android smartphone contain malware.
As an example of Android’s misunderstood security, Ludwig used the infamous series of critical bugs known as Stagefright, which were found last year. Ludwig noted that despite the alarm and the potential danger to practically all Android users, they have yet to see a real-life hack on an Android phone done exploiting Stagefright.
“At this point we still don’t have any confirmed instances of exploitation in the wild,” he said.
Read more: Google Security Engineer Claims Android Is Now As Secure as the iPhone
“For almost all threat models,” Adrian Ludwig, the director of security at Android, referring to the level of security needed by most people, “they are nearly identical in terms of their platform-level capabilities.”
In a short interview after a talk at a security conference in Manhattan on Tuesday the talk, Ludwig said that, “for sure,” there’s no doubt that a Google Pixel and an iPhone are pretty much equal when it comes to security. Android, he added, will soon be better though.
“In the long term, the open ecosystem of Android is going to put it in a much better place,” he said, without mentioning that Android has already been around for more than eight years at this point.
During his talk at the O’Reilly Security Conference Ludwig said that Android’s built-in security product called “Safety Net” scans 400 million devices per day and checks a stunning 6 billions apps per day.
The result of these security checks, coupled with the exploit mitigation measures baked into Android, mean that a really small number of Android devices has malware or, as Google calls it, “Potentially Harmful Applications” or PHAs, according to Ludwig. In fact, Ludwig said showing a graph, less than 1% of Android smartphone contain malware.
As an example of Android’s misunderstood security, Ludwig used the infamous series of critical bugs known as Stagefright, which were found last year. Ludwig noted that despite the alarm and the potential danger to practically all Android users, they have yet to see a real-life hack on an Android phone done exploiting Stagefright.
“At this point we still don’t have any confirmed instances of exploitation in the wild,” he said.
Read more: Google Security Engineer Claims Android Is Now As Secure as the iPhone
