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this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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If Apple cares about protecting privacy they'd use an open, interoperable, cross-platform standard instead of just making cracks like, "just buy your Mom an iPhone."
But android does this exact thing and has far more vulnerabilities
Open source doesn’t magically make things more secure unfortunately, no matter how many people seem to think this
AOSP Development was almost completely separated from the commonly distributed Android OS around version 2.2 in like 2010-ish, if I'm not mistaken. If you do get an OS built upon the old open source versions, they are usually quite secure and value privacy heavily, such as CalyxOS.
So no, Android is not Open Source nor is it free, but yes proprietary Android software has more potential vulnerabilities.
Last year android had 1400 vulnerabilities to iOS’ 482.
402 of androids were above a CVSS score of 7 & 221 for iOS.
Android is less secure than iOS on average and Apple is widely known to be more secure than android. That’s not to say I’m a fan of things apple does. I’m purely speaking vulns for one OS to another.
So we both agree that proprietary operating systems need to be outlawed and dismantled.
Outlawed?
Not at all
Think it’s a bad idea?
Yea
The more used OS will always have more people looking for ways to break it. Same shit happened with windows and Mac. The old picture of the house in the city with bars on the windows vs a house in the country with unlocked doors still applies.
The only vulnerabilities you even really need to worry about are zero days which won't be in the threat tracking databases.
Right but that’s a contributing factor to iOS’ strength
Their risk surface isn’t massive…
Their App Store is on a tighter leash too so less risk there and less opportunities for persistence/c2 activity which encourages and enables further vuln discovery and valuable data mining on devices
I’m confused what you’re arguing here
Just recently it was discovered that apples m1 silicon has a security vulnerability that exposes encryption keys under certain conditions and it's a hardware vulnerability which is unpatchable without buying the newer models.
I’m not saying that apple is invincible…
I think you may be misunderstanding if you thought my view was really that shallow..
You can't compare those two. First of all, Apple's walled garden makes it significantly harder to perform security research. Second, Android has a way larger ecosystem and is not a monolith, so of course there's gonna be more.
Apple = Apple, but Android ≠ Android.
So fine, do you wanna look at specific numbers for the pixel, Samsung, huwaeii, etc against iOS? Bc we can!
Also, I hope you see the irony in you saying we can’t compare apple(s) to oranges (android as a whole ecosystem).
You definitely can, and I did so fairly.
If you had any idea about how it works, you would not compare them. If you had any idea about how hard Apple makes security research, especially without a Mac, you would not compare them.
But you don't know what it's about. Being a consumer does not make you an expert.
When have I claimed to be an expert?
Second off, I am fully aware of how difficult apple makes testing their product, given that they’re proprietary software and not using something easily reversed or cracked (encryption, not license keys of course) which is part of their defense for using a walled garden for security (security by obscurity isnt security though, and it’s only a matter of time before the public builds up enough of a knowledge base to not need docs from the manufacturer.
Private companies exist (plenty of em too) who’s sole purpose is to find exploits for “cops and police” to access perpetrators data.
I work in cybersec, I’m fully aware but thanks for making a random assumption about me, someone you don’t know, kinda hypocritical don’t you think?
Idk why I feel the need but here we are - I’m tired of people in this thread trying to switch gears and move goal posts. We’re talking about major consumer use of OS which means mainstream OS’s - apple has historically lower vuln rates. Partly due to obscurity, which will evaporate more as time goes on unless apple continues to change things behind the scenes which could get costly.
Google has their perverbial ass hanging out so that people can analyze it more easily for vulns (you’ll notice I said more easily, because people can and do test iOS for vulns all the fucking time) and will constantly have shit to patch. Which means more vulns are known more consistently whereas apple has phases where people are still figuring shit out. Which gives apple time to patch fairly quickly id say if you’d like to look at those specific metrics.
I’m not interested in words, I want you to point out numbers and metrics if you have them. Fact is that apple is, on average, more secure than a typical end-user android OS.