Four in five Android devices inherit Linux snooping flaw A previously identified Linux flaw, which allows anyone to hijack internet traffic, also affects 80 per cent of Android devices. The original vulnerability, which was reported this spring, involves a critical exploit in TCP that lets hackers obtain unencrypted traffic and degrade encrypted traffic to spy on victims. The …
"But as a PHONE, its perfect. If i want apps i run them on my S2 tablet. If i want to make a phone call i use my PHONE" - exactly, because you're not going to find all the apps you want on your PHONE. People who use Android or iOS can, when needed, run most of the apps they want on their PHONE as well as their tablet.
Windows phones might be cheap, but they aren't as functional. This is due to the lack of apps. The numbers speak for themselves - less then 1 in 100 people are even close to preferring Windows as opposed to Android or iOS. And it's not just the lack of apps. People don't trust Windows as much as the other two, because.... Windows.
Oh well.
Happily for me, I don't have any secrets of any interest to, variously, the CIA, the Chinese, Mossad, etc, nor do I have any banking stuff on my phone. Or any disgruntled ex partners working for any agency. Still, the shadow of 20th century history - totalitarian states, manipulation of democracy in states professing to be free - hangs over us.
I was chatting with a fella in the pub last night who does clever electronic R&D stuff for the MoD - he says their Blackberrys have been replaced by locked-down iPhone 6s running Blackberry software, though he doesn't see the point of the 'upgrade' since the corporate apps don't really make use of the iPhone's bigger screen and better camera etc. (For obvious reasons, conversation wasn't about what he does unless already in the public domain, but good chatting about general corporate/academic culture and engineering)
The corporate apps probably can't be (well can be, but won't be) modified to make use of the iPhone's bigger screen until ALL the old Blackberries have been replaced. I assume an upgrade like that isn't overnight, and there will be some people who love the physical keyboard who will be the "cold dead hands" that they'll have to pry the last few from.
I know it is serious, but the vulnerability allows the attacker to disrupt and degrade a connection between two hosts, and potentially inject traffic.
This isn't snooping. I think if we want the public to respond appropriately to issues we need to moderate the hyperbole and not go straight for "every Linux based thing in your life is now lethal" etc
It might also be worth observing that the flaw described in CVE-2016-5696 was introduced to correct or mitigate a previously existing, and perhaps much more serious, vulnerability.
Also worth noting is that the probability that any large piece of software contains no errors is operationally equal to zero. This vulnerability, like large numbers of earlier ones, will be mitigated or eliminated, and others will be found, and some of them will have been introduced in the correction process.
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