Malicious apps infect 25M Android devices with 'Agent Smith' malware

Re:Malicious apps infect 25M Android devices with 'Agent Smi... by snarf21 on Thursday July 11, 2019 @01:16PM (#20413368)

This is also solvable by Android taking a slightly different approach. Isolating the OS and security framework so that it can always just be updated. The carriers and and manufacturers are still free to install whatever bloatware they want and do what ever logo nonsense they want.

We ran into nonsense issues creating a cross platform development toolchain when HTC phones just didn't implement certain functions of the WebView. We were then stuck trying to create workarounds for no reason. Android could have been the best of both worlds but they just punted it and left their users holding the bag.

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Re:Malicious apps infect 25M Android devices with 'Agent Smi... by ansible on Thursday July 11, 2019 @08:54PM (#20417235)

> This is also solvable by Android taking a slightly different approach. Isolating the OS and security framework so that it can always just be updated.

I think that is the plan with Fuchsia.

The core of the OS is small. The drivers can be separated out more easily, and with a (hopefully) stable driver API, they may not need to get updated ever (baring security bugs in the driver code itself).

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Re:Malicious apps infect 25M Android devices with 'Agent Smi... by panpanna on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:42AM (#20418998)

Not to sound like a Google apologist, but all you ask is already in there.

And Google's extensive compatibility requirements aside, webview is now directly updated from the store.

Android Q will extend this to most system components via apex.

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