Re:The mother of all Android malware has arrived
by ekidd on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @10:54AM
(#2279939)
Isn't the appeal of Google's app store that it isn't curated?
Yes and no. As a developer, I certainly love the relative ease and freedom of Google's Market. But as user, I don't want to fear clicking "Download" or "Buy". Apple succeeds, in part, because their App Store provides a certain measure of trust, and users are willing to open their wallets.
At a minimum, Google needs to respond quickly to malware reports, and to enforce anti-piracy rules vigorously. Allowing attackers to pirate and republish apps allows them to attack many more users than they could reach by developing malicious-but-popular applications from scratch.
And Apple has never let a "(benign) root exploit" through approval.
Yeah, I think that was an incorrect statement on my part. Apple has passed major, hidden functionality that violates their policies, but I was mistaken in thinking a root exploit was involved. For a mea culpa, see the thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279823
Yes and no. As a developer, I certainly love the relative ease and freedom of Google's Market. But as user, I don't want to fear clicking "Download" or "Buy". Apple succeeds, in part, because their App Store provides a certain measure of trust, and users are willing to open their wallets.
At a minimum, Google needs to respond quickly to malware reports, and to enforce anti-piracy rules vigorously. Allowing attackers to pirate and republish apps allows them to attack many more users than they could reach by developing malicious-but-popular applications from scratch.
And Apple has never let a "(benign) root exploit" through approval.
Yeah, I think that was an incorrect statement on my part. Apple has passed major, hidden functionality that violates their policies, but I was mistaken in thinking a root exploit was involved. For a mea culpa, see the thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279823