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ACLU Asks FTC To Force Carriers To 'Patch Or Replace' Android Devices
chicksdaddy writes "The American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday calling on the federal government to take action to stem an epidemic of unpatched and insecure Android mobile devices – declaring the sea of unpatched and vulnerable phones and tablets 'defective and unreasonably dangerous.' The civil liberties group's complaint for injunctive relief with the FTC (PDF), notes that 'major wireless carriers have sold millions of Android smartphones to consumers' but that 'the vast majority of these devices rarely receive software security updates.' The ACLU says carriers leave their customers vulnerable to malware and spear phishing attacks that can be used to record or transmit information on the device to' third parties. 'A significant number of consumers are using smartphones running a version of the Android operating system with known, exploitable security vulnerabilities for which fixes have been published by Google, but have not been distributed to consumers' smartphones by the wireless carriers and their handset manufacturer partners,' the ACLU said. Android devices now account for close to 70 percent of new mobile devices sold. The porous security of many of those devices has become a topic of concern. The latest data from Google highlights the challenge facing the company, with just over 25% of Android users running versions 4.1 or 4.2 – the latest versions of the OS, dubbed 'Jelly Bean,' more than six months after its release. In contrast, 40% of Android users are still running the 'Gingerbread' release – versions 2.3.3 through 2.3.7, a two year-old version of the operating system that has known security vulnerabilities."
I think this shows one of the greatest flaws in the not owning your hardware debate. What happens when you the company that owns it simply gives up on support??? You're left holding the bag but can't change it's content.
I think you missed the point. Google has published the patches but the carriers have not distributed them.
'A significant number of consumers are using smartphones running a version of the Android operating system with known, exploitable security vulnerabilities for which fixes have been published by Google, but have not been distributed to consumers'
Highlighted the important part from TFS. Google's released patches. Carriers are refusing to give them to their customers. There's nothing Google can do about that. Hence why the ACLU is lobbying the FTC to force the carriers into action.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Much of the trouble is that the carriers load the phones with worthless bloatware, and block the user's ability to remove it. There's then not enough free space to install updates.
I own a Motorola Atrix 4G. It is an excellent smartphone platform. It has been abandoned
by Motorola even though the phone can easily run ICS and Jellybean. We Atrix 4G users
may never see an official update, on a phone they originally PROMISED to update.
Sad thing is Motorola Mobility is now owned by Google. Go Figure.
About bloody time that someone does this. It is absolutely indefensible that the carriers have refused to release patches for known security holes for extended periods of time if they release them at all. This blatantly leaves their customers vulnerable and their customers have no way of circumventing this short of rooting their phones.
I read the article before it appeared on Slashdot and many of these phone will literally never receive any patches from the carrier. These phones are effectively being sold as known defective devices and I hope someone initiates a class action lawsuit on the matter as I can't think of any other way to fix this issue. Patch Management really should not be an afterthought and it affects every device, every operating system and unfortunately there are still legions of idiots out there equate Patch Management with Microsoft Windows patch Tuesday.
That it would require a lawsuit in order to patch your phone and secure it against a known vulnerability say much about about the state of American cell phone industry. This country desperately needs to adopt the standards used by the rest of the world and it's a point of shame that we have the industry we do. Most Americans don't know how bad things are here because they never go abroad, and once they do it's like walking into a candy store for the first time with "you can do that?", again and again.
Why did you buy a carrier phone?
Why not get a device that might actually get updates?
You voted for this system with your purchase, you are part of why it exists.
No, the difference is that no one is blocking anyone from getting the XP updates that Microsoft releases. This isn't about Google no longer supplying updates to old Android versions, it's about carriers blocking users from getting updates.
Very true. My old communications device was the most secure and I've yet to find something that rivals it. It was impossible to spoof, clone, or manipulate and all my data was secure. Sure it was hard to make long-distance calls, because finding large spools of string is difficult, but the fidelity of those tin cans was soooo pure. Plus, they never got any malware, not even once.
From TFS:
'A significant number of consumers are using smartphones running a version of the Android operating system with known, exploitable security vulnerabilities for which fixes have been published by Google
They did release patches, the carriers are blocking them, therefore, ACLU is suing to get the carriers to stop being jerks.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I would say 5 years for any device that costs $500 or less, 7 years for any device that costs between $500-$800, and 10 years for any device that costs $1000 and above.
They should also be forced to put the driver code in escrow which must be provided by the hardware manufacturer so if they refuse to update and patch that code can be handed out so a different OS can support it. That way if a company wants to keep it proprietary? fine then YOU have to provide patches and updates. Don't want to do that? Then you hand out the code so somebody else can. Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Very true. My old communications device was the most secure and I've yet to find something that rivals it. It was impossible to spoof, clone, or manipulate and all my data was secure. Sure it was hard to make long-distance calls, because finding large spools of string is difficult, but the fidelity of those tin cans was soooo pure. Plus, they never got any malware, not even once.
Unfortunately, you're very vulnerable to a can-in-the-middle attack.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."