And neither is it exclusively an Android issue as some make out


Actually is was, Android has teathering built in natively or apps that provide the functionality


Hijacking a browser is far from physical access, in fact it's almost as removed as you can get


I'm not saying Android is secure, however there have been pretty big security flaws in both systems (The emergency call bug that allowed access to a users address list was pretty bad in 4.1) that need to be addressed. Common sense is key, as an Android marketplace app does say what the app accesses, phone state, address book etc. The user has to accept this before installing it.

There should be some more stringent checks, however I must say I am pretty pissed off neither OS has support for reading/downloading iCal/vCal files natively, something which could be seen as a fairly big flaw in theory for a smartphone with calendar and event planning in both cases

Which one was the browser hijack? http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/iPhone-jailbroken-by-Safari-vulnerability-again-Update-1049234.html - this one?
It's not hijacking a browser, it's tricking the .pdf component of the phone into downloading software that then jailbreaks the phone.
The recurrent theme in all the exploits show so far would appear to be the jailbreaking aspect.

Except the exploit I posted and you quoted that exploits the browser and handling of pdf files and has persisted in one form or another

And again, I'd point out they only affect handsets that have been jailbroken - the iPhone malware article even states "Of course, non-jailbroken iPhones are completely unaffected by this malware."
You require physical access to the phone for another, so the "...the hacker would need physical access to your iPhone to accomplish this feat. To achieve this, the phone is first jailbroken and then the hacker would run a few scripts that enable it to circumvent the iPhone’s security and encryption mechanism."
The .pdf component weakness is the most serious flaw - but for a malicious version of that to be successful you'd require social engineering, and you're still going to jailbreak the phone to get what you're after.
The .pdf loophole was closed with iOS 4.0.2, by the way.

You might need to jailbreak a phone to get the result, but a result is a result

Ah good, only took from September 2007 to August 2010 to fix it then
The actual 4.0.2 log was:
# Fixed a security vulnerability in FreeType that allowed remote code to be executed via Safari.
# Fixed a security vulnerability in the Io Surface private framework that allowed privilege escalation

That is a fairly big pair of vulnerabilities. It is good that they were fixed though

This is true. And let's face it, once you have physical access to the device, I'd be amazed if there was any phone out there that couldn't be circumvented in some fashion.

Yes, it is! And I have a proof!
You can have iBoobs on Android but not on Iphone.
http://www.androidcentral.com/banned-20 ... oid-market

And now I have a reason to swap.

Seems Google are closing down Android piece by piece.

http://www.t3.com/news/google-moves-to- ... ion?=54975




I wonder how far they will eventually go?

Maybe they want the closed garden do what you we tell you Apple approach?

They want whatever approach gives the most influence and profit. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

Jon

That about sums it up for me.

In that case, they simply need to make the best platform possible.

Surely they need to make the most appealing and most marketed platform?

Being the best doesn't usually guarantee anything

It's still not closed though, you can still access the source and make changes as you wish, this means if you want to release it on a product they have to OK it to stop updates taking years to roll out. You can't go and make obscure changes to Ubuntu without getting them checked first

Nothing to stop them providing it as an add on to the user at a later date

Shorter time to roll out updates = happier customer
happier customer = better customer for company = more money
more money for company = more licences for android
more licences for android = more money for google
Simples

It's not closed when they haven't released the Honeycomb code either as it's currently tablet only, still unfinished for phones and it's to stop people hacking it onto their phone and getting a poor experience

On a side note is there a limit to time from finish to release Open Source software must be?