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How Apple's iOS Went From Insecure To Most Secure
GMGruman writes "There's no such thing as a perfectly secure operating system, but security experts agree — somewhat grudgingly in some cases — that iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, is the most secure commercial OS today, mobile or desktop. It didn't start that way of course, and Robert Lemos explains what Apple did to go from insecure to most secure."
Wait... aren't we talking about the same iOS that gets jailbroken like clockwork still?
An ultimately secure OS would be the one that does not do anything at all. No inputs and no outputs. Perhaps iOS is closer to that ideal than any other.
Most Secure? And the security is in the App Store? I don't know why the author's trying so hard to bullshit his way through. Sensationalist headlines just to get a few more ad impressions, eh.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Sent from your iPhone.
Any expert that holds a grudge like that is no expert I ever care to hear from.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Apple is going after the market of users who are sick of dealing with security issues/malware/etc. They've done it by created a closed system. And while us geeks hate that, it has a strong appeal to most people. When they go to a closed system on Mac's (and they will), that's who they're going to be appealing to. "Buy a computer where all your software is pre-screened through our App Store and you don't have to worry about viruses" is a powerful (and potentially very profitable) message in a time when malware and assorted hacks have become so common.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
More people need to pay attention to http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl and mod stories like this into oblivion.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Sensationalist, baseless claim? Check.
Short article "sourced" entirely off in-house artices? Check.
Forces to use print version to avoid ad overload? Check.
Yep, it's InfoWorld alright.
Although iOS has a lot of security going on underneath the hood, its safety could be due in large part to the fact that attackers have not focused on compromising the devices because there is no economic incentive to attack them, says Lookout's Mahaffey.
Really? No economic incentive?
Unlike PCs and Macs, every cell phone is directly associated with a credit card. Essentially a cell phone IS money. Bad actors can - and do - monetize this with malware that places calls to sketchy and high-cost phone numbers, or send texts to subscribe to "information services," resulting in (fraudulent) charges showing up each month. And good luck trying to dispute charges with your cellular provider on those. They will just tell you that their hands are tied by federal law and that they can't help you, but nonetheless will turn around and threaten you with collection if you don't pay.
There's definitely economic incentive to attack mobile phones.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
OpenBSD has been at it a lot longer. Even as a Linux Zealot, I would choose OpenBSD for security. IOS is a closed Black-Box that nobody but Stevie knows what's inside. Historically we tend to find *cough*siemens*cough* that closed source, proprietary *cough*secureid*cough* offerings do not necessarily equate to a trustworthy or "secure" system. What seems to happen is closed source options provide a layer of obscurity which allow the governing company *cough*dropbox*cough* to take inexcusable risks with customers assets because, basically, they don't need to show anybody. As long as they never get caught, they save a lot of money not having to implement a system to keep them honest.
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I think apple iOS is the most secure (tehehe) because of all the people searching for flaws to Jailbreak it with. Its like free security testing.
functionality
You keep saying that word. But I do not think it means what you think it means. -- Inigo Montoya
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Oh, so you can run emulator software on it now, can you?
Or compile source code into packages that you can install onto it?
Or go into the boot up processes and turn off or configure any services that you don't want or want to run differently?
Or create a specific account to run the OS will much fewer permissions so that you're more secure due to the tighter restrictions you've placed yourself under?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It updates without asking people.. it disables things without asking people... certain types of useful software are internally prevented from ever running on it.. it steals information about me - such as my geographical location and uploads it to a server without me asking.. it won't work unless it has my credit card number..
if a hacker did that to my laptop, I'd hunt him down and punch his fucking head in.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I'll preface this reply with: I have an iPhone developer account so I'm not a normal user, however, your list of things aren't on the list of things that normal users give a shit about so I'll follow up anyway.
Oh, so you can run emulator software on it now, can you?
Yep, use my own circuit simulators and I've been working on an ATmega simulator for shits and giggles. No they'd never be sold on the appstore, but I can run them just fine without doing anything against Apples rules.
Or compile source code into packages that you can install onto it?
Yes, thats exactly what ALL iOS developers do, thats what gets distributed to your phone, a .ipa file which is a ... a software package, so when I compile my projects and select 'make archive' in XCode, it does exactly that, makes a package which can be dragged and dropped onto iTunes and installed. The package manager is called iTunes instead of apt, functionality on the other hand is more less the same.
Or go into the boot up processes and turn off or configure any services that you don't want or want to run differently?
Probably not, but I can not for the life of me come up with a reason why I'd want to turn off the only two services that start on startup ... which are designed to manage the wireless network access. I guess I could turn off all networking services and come close, but I wouldn't have bought the device if I didn't want those services, I would have gotten a iPod touch or something without radios.
What processes do you want to 'turn off'? Push notifications, SMS, or working phone service? Nothing else worth mentioning is running.
Or create a specific account to run the OS will much fewer permissions so that you're more secure due to the tighter restrictions you've placed yourself under?
So uhm ... you mean like how iOS works out of the box and has for years? I seem to remember a brief moment on the 1.x series where some things ran as root which was promptly fixed, but the only time anything has exploited that fact has been from jailbreakers without a clue porting apps to iOS without any thought what so ever about security ... WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY APPLE HAS THE POLICIES IT HAS.
I'm not saying you should buy an iPhone, you clearly shouldn't, its not for you, its for people that make educated choices about their purchases, not for geeks with a stick up their ass who try to pretend they have a clue about something they hate without an actual reason. You don't want a phone, its cool dude. Just let it go, its never going to be the Linux phone of your dreams, but can't you accept that it is perfectly usable for a lot of people ...
You have basically two choices, accept that other people want other things out of their phone than being able to tweak it to oblivion and run any app they might want while using crappy package managers that some geeks think are gods gift to the world.
Or
Accept that you are completely and totally wrong in probably every way.
Personally, I doubt you'll think either one applies to you since you're clearly out of touch with reality anyway.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager