Some Android phone vendors are skipping security patches without notifying users, and instead hoodwinking their customers into believing their smartphone software is up to date with Google’s monthly security releases, according to a new research. Researchers with Germany’s Security Research Labs (SRL) tested the firmware of 1,200 phones from manufacturers like Google, Samsung, Sony, Nokia, Huawei, Motorola, LG, HTC, ZTE and TCL for every patch released in 2017.
The results they found were quite interesting. Researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell said that there’s often a hidden “patch gap” between what the phones manufacturers tell the users about their software patch and what patches have actually been installed.
“Our large study of Android phones finds that most Android vendors regularly forget to include some patches, leaving parts of the ecosystem exposed to the underlying risks,” the SRL report notes.
Google pushes out Android security updates each month that is a collection of patches for a variety of security bugs. But while manufacturers may install some of the fixes, changing the security update date to the latest, they can fail to install all the patches included in any particular month’s update.
Failing to update their smartphones with the latest security updates is one thing, but SRL found that many phone makers simply lied without installing any patches at all.
“We found several vendors that didn’t install a single patch but changed the patch date forward by several months,” SRL founder Nohl said. For example, Samsung’s 2016 J3 claimed to have every 2017 Android patch installed but in fact when 12 weren’t actually installed.
Still, SRL says that major handset makers, Google, Samsung and Sony have the most secure Android phones missing on an average from zero to one update. Then there are companies like Nokia, OnePlus and Xiaomi which miss between one and three patches, while phones sold by HTC, Huawei, LG and Motorola are missing three to four patches. Bringing up the rear are ZTE and TCL, whose phones on average have missed more than four Android security patches.
In response, Security Research Labs has updated its SnoopSnitch app, where Android phone users can get an accurate breakdown of which security updates have and haven’t been installed.
Shame on samsungakar.
+1 GG
APPLE = SECURITY & PRIVACY
APPLE = ALL YOUR DATA WITH FBI AND EASILY HACKABLE BY ANYONE. YOUR PRIVATE PICS ARE SHARED TO THE WORLD IF ANYONE WANTS IT.
hahahahahahahahahahah the fappenning was awesome lol
Not if you were the victim. Lol. Those poor people trusting greedy Apple.
Anyway I will stay away from that folder. Or atleast try to. LOL.
haha only the hollywood stars were the victims. Well, most of them. There’s a rule they should follow. Use a Samsung galaxy S series, and don’t use cloud storage.
Well there is something called two step verification. Can you prove that gmail is never hacked?? All stars whose accounts were been hacked were not using two step verification kindly check how these accounts were hacked. Also in ios no apps can mine data as in Android. In Android few apps wont even start if I dont provide the permission to use my call logs and sms. If you are using Android, all your data will be provided for free to FBi. They wont even need to go to a third party.
Remember the day when apple rejected to unlock an iphone of a criminal when FBI asked it??
GG, its still more secure then android any day. No app can take data from iOS like android does. Also if you see FBI case, they werent able to hack into the device on there own so they hired 3rd party which also wasnt able to hack fullly but partially for approx 100crores for one single iPhone.
Even apps like truecaller dont get permissions in iOS loke it get in android.
Security wise iOS is much much secure then android.