{"id":10296,"date":"2015-10-20T09:51:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T13:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=10296"},"modified":"2019-11-15T07:01:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T12:01:12","slug":"insecure-android-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/insecure-android-devices\/10296\/","title":{"rendered":"87% of Android smartphones are insecure and that’s no joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

British scientists proved that Android devices are highly dangerous when it comes to you and your data. It\u2019s no joke \u2014 researchers at the University of Cambridge did serious research<\/a> on the devices: analyzing over 20,000 smartphones by various vendors to discover that 87.7% of Android devices are susceptible to at least one critical vulnerability.<\/p>\n

This dreadful fact emerged as byproduct of a study whose goal was to reveal whose devices (speaking of vendors) were the most secure.<\/p>\n

The experiment was conducted with help of ordinary people and their ordinary smartphones: the participants consented to set up a special app called\u00a0Device Analyzer<\/a> from Google Play. This application helped to find out how resistant the devices were to the most widespread attacks by sending data on what versions of software were installed on the device.<\/p>\n

Not all vulnerabilities were taken into consideration \u2013 just those exploitable completely wirelessly. Of those 32 were critical, but only 11 bugs that could be applied to all participating devices, were considered during the experiment to provide for fair results.<\/p>\n

\"Android<\/a><\/p>\n

So, why do different vendors offer ranging security levels? First, it depends on whether the OS version is up-to-date; Google, Linux Foundation and other relevant Android developers issue regular updates, which include security patches for known vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

The thing is that the majority of Android devices are queuing to get those updates, so it happens not that fast as it should be. It\u2019s not Google who sends the OTA updates; a carrier of an OEM vendor now performs this task and the updates are delivered as fast as the vendor likes it to be \u2013 meaning \u2018not fast at all.\u2019<\/p>\n

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1 Billion #Android<\/a> devices vulnerable to #NEW<\/a> Stagefright flaws\u2026 #nopatches<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/1Wt8iqOY2b<\/a> via @threatpost<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/LJUuODPDra<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Kaspersky (@kaspersky) October 1, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n