Android’s Customizability Makes Quadrooter and Other Safety Patches a Challenge
The more capabilities incorporated into smartphones and other devices means increasingly complex software under the hood to enable them. Much like Microsoft’s Windows that by necessity needed to be open to so many devices (mice, keyboards, monitors, game controllers, printers, scanners and the like), Android’s fragmented ecosystem with nearly every smartphone manufacturer customizing the OS means each software patch needs to be tweaked as well. Score one for the closed Apple iPhone ecosystem.
Another big security flaw in Android highlights just how messed up the Google ecosystem still is when it comes to security. This one, known as Quadrooter, was disclosed in recent days by security software maker Check Point.
Quadrooter affects a whole host of top-end Android devices running one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips.That means hundreds of millions or even a billion devices could be at risk, including top-end models such as the Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10 and LG G5 and even Google’s latest Nexus devices and security-focused devices like BlackBerry’s Priv and Silent Circle’s Blackphone.
Source: A new flaw puts nearly a billion phones at risk and shows Android security is still a patchwork mess
