Google Security Engineer Claims Android Is Now As Secure As the iPhone (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: 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.

Comments

Re:I'll believe that...

[fluffernutter]

Android users are too busy getting stuff done to be out committing crimes.

A new measure of security-

[billrp]

"We're as good as the other guy"

Re: I'll believe that...

[Zero__Kelvin]

I was a pre-order customer for the very first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 and I've been using them without incident ever since. I also don't know anyone who HAS ever had an issue.

Re:Exploding heads

[Ol Olsoc]

Don't hold the Note 7 so close to your head.

With apologies to Johnny Cash, I present Phone of Fire:

My phone is a burnin' thing

And its tone is a fiery ring

Lured by the size and power

I bought a phone of fire

My phone turned into a burnin' ring of fire

burned my car up

As the flames went higher

And it burns, burns, burns

The phone of fire, the phone of fire

A smartphone is really sweet

With no data cap, for it to meet

I fell for it like a child

Oh, but the fire it went wild

My phone turned into a burnin' ring of fire

burned my car up

As the flames went higher

And it burns, burns, burns

The phone of fire, the phone of fire