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A comment on Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Malicious PNG Image. Parent comment

Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by swebs on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @07:29AM (#19142937)
It's crazy how this is even an issue in Android when it has been a solved problem in desktop Linux for decades. I can install Ubuntu on any ancient laptop and have daily security updates for life. The only explanation I can think of is that Google planned this on purpose so users would be forced to buy new devices every few years.
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by IshKebab on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @07:37AM (#19142974)
It's nothing to do with Linux. It's because desktops use standardised discoverable hardware with mostly documented peripheral interfaces. ARM phones do not.
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by jsight on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @09:39AM (#19143767)
That is really only an issue for low-level drivers and kernel level issues. There is nothing stopping OS vendors from fixing this without updating the drivers.
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by IshKebab on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @04:35PM (#19147775)
There is for Linux because it doesn't have a stable driver ABI. The drivers and the kernel are inseparable.
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by jsight on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @03:04PM (#19156417)
I never said otherwise. But the most critical android vulnerabilities are almost always fixable in userspace.
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by PascLeRasc on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @10:49AM (#19144453)
At the risk of sounding uninformed, does this mean the Year Of The ARM Desktop will have these same issues with updates and standardised hardware, or is it just a mobile SOC thing?
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by ReptileMan on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @08:01AM (#19143095)
If you can force phone manifacturers to standrize chargers, same is possible for other issues.
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Re:Android Phones Can Be Hacked Remotely by Viewing Maliciou... by zozbot123 on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @09:26AM (#19143664)
Google did not "plan this on purpose" - if anything, they managed to deal with the general crappiness of ARM hardware somewhat better than other Linux-on-mobile efforts did, which is why Android became dominant in the first place.
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