SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
ZDNet have put out a story claiming that, although Apple's walled-garden approach is not popular with everybody, it does appear to have prevented almost all malware from becoming prevalent on iOS. From the article:
Everyone knows there's no iOS malware, right? Strictly speaking, there is. As a practical matter, there isn't. At least if you stick with the official Apple store, you are more likely to win Powerball than to be hit by iOS malware.
But to make that "strictly speaking" point, FortiGuard Labs's Axelle Apvrille ("the Crypto Girl") felt it necessary to list all the iOS malware on record all 11 instances, eight of which work only on jailbroken phones.
[....]
It's not like iOS isn't an inviting target. There are zillions of devices out there and iOS customers have shown that they are willing to spend money on apps. And there absolutely are ways that iPhones can be attacked, although more likely through vulnerabilities, especially in Safari, than through malicious apps.
In fact, Apple's rules for what it will allow in its App Store are so strict that they effectively ban security software. It's a good thing there is next to no malware, because what you would need to do to block it on your phone is not permitted. Android, on the other hand, has a burgeoning market for security software and no shortage of malware.
Do you agree with this assessment?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Saturday June 14 2014, @06:25PM
There are plenty of interesting things to be done on iOS. Here and on Slashdot, we have an unusual niche of hobbyist geeks that want to do things with gadgets that most people don't. And many are prepared to accept the security downgrade that comes with it. For most phone users that's a security cost with no benefit, as thy don't want to do those things.
The only popular thing the freedoms (and security cost) you are talking about enables is piracy.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @06:49PM
> The only popular thing the freedoms (and security cost) you are talking about enables is piracy.
Don't confuse your ignorance of what other people want for what is really unwanted.
For example, XPrivacy [wired.com] on Android is revolutionary but the user-interface is not anywhere near close to mainstream quality levels. That's irrelevant for iOS though, because there are no circumstances whatsoever in which Apple will allow an app with that kind of functionality because it interferes with apple-approved "malware" the kind that sells you out to 'legitimate' companies instead of outright criminals.
But there are much simpler things that Apple won't let you do with an iphone that regular people want to do. For example, you can't record from the camera or the microphone with the screen off -- apple forbids apps that do that. Another thing you can't do is log what happens in imessage to email - you can do it one message at a time, and you can try to extract it from a device backup, but if you just want a set-it-and-forget it automated external log of the text messages you receive you can't do it.
I know about those two cases because my friend's daughter has an abusive husband and she needed to do those things in order to get irrefutable proof of his abuse (death threats, etc) because he's smart enough not to leave bruises. Apple wouldn't let her.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Monday June 16 2014, @07:19PM
There's nothing quite so ignorant as an AC.
XPrivacy is an app that only exists to counter the security weaknesses of Android. It's not needed on iOS because users can already selectively deny apps access to user data.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 15 2014, @01:17AM
The real question is whether the device you bought really belongs to you, or do you still want Apple to continue to dictate what you can and can't do with the gadget you paid them several hundred dollars for? That expensive gadget is your device only insofar as Apple's goals and yours coincide. If they ever clash, you always lose. It's a secure (as in trusted computing secure) computer, but it's secure as far as Apple is concerned, not you. Bruce Schneier wrote this [schneier.com] about the first mainstream attempts at making such "trusted computing" a reality (Microsoft's Palladium/NGSCB):
Arguably many modern-day mobile devices (both iOS and Android) have become exactly what Schneier described in that article from 2002: "owned by a variety of factions and companies all looking for a piece of our wallet." Further extrapolating beyond that into a world where the type of attitude that the iDevices foster becomes still more ubiquitous looks a lot like this famous dystopia [gnu.org].