Browser security issues anyone?

Browser security issues anyone?

Apparently, a bunch of users at Android Community are experiencing a hack that redirects them from the Yahoo! homepage to a site that sells anti-virus software.  Are you experiencing this as well?  Leave a comment below!

One of the main concerns of Android being open-source is the security.  In the future, we hope that Google will be able to identify and deal with these issues before these exploits become widespread and cause any real damage.

[via Android Community]


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  • Luke

    This has nothing to do with Android, it is a known problem with D-Link routers:

    http://www.breakitdownblog.com/d-link-dir-655-updated-firmware-hijacks-your-dns/

    (or it is possibly the following problem, though less likely:)

    http://www.darkreading.com/security/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211201119

    This is a case of people using their G1 over a WLAN connection, through a D-Link router with the above problem… nothing suspicious here, move along.

    I find it rather laughable too that this post included the sentence “One of the main concerns of Android being open-source is the security.”

    Firstly, do you really believe that this could be due to a bug due to some malicious user contributing some change upstream, which made it past the Android codebase maintainers, and somehow managed to get rolled-out by a T-Mobile OTA update, when (1) large numbers of open source contributions to the Android platform haven’t yet started flowing in (as opposed to apps that *run* on Android, of which there are many), (2) the Android devs are still scrambling to have the dust settle after the public release of both the platform and the G1, and are at this point highly unresponsive to bugs filed in the bug-tracker etc., because they have their hands full, and (3) T-Mobile has only rolled out two very minor updates to fix nagging bugs, and haven’t yet rolled out any large platform changes (and in fact there haven’t been many changes to the underlying platform since their release…).

    Secondly, do you *really* believe that “security through obscurity” is a more robust form of security than open source? Ask any security company what they think about Microsoft’s approach.

  • Nicholas Ahn

    This is true Luke, some users have pointed this point out. However, it remains questionable if the situation is isolated to WiFi itself, as several users are reporting this effect over T-Mobile’s 3G network, with WiFi turned off.

    Concerning the Android codebase maintainers, they have done an excellent job in creating a new platform for mobile phones. However, all developers have made mistakes with new platforms (and some old ones too). To suggest that any development team would be able to release a flawless OS in its early stages is somewhat unreasonable.

    Out of honesty, thought I don’t enjoy it all of the time, I believe that security through obscurity works quite well. Every country in the world depends on obscurity to ensure the safety of its citizens. True, a multitude of open-source projects have been successful, but security is a greater concern with open-source (Firefox as an excellent example).

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