Hacker News Reader

Comment by opendomain | Hacker News Reader

Android Apss are easier to deploy, but becuase of that, you get bad code - or WORSE - viruses! There are several Andoid apps that are Malware - there is not one in Apple App store.

View on HN

So you're saying that Android should make it more difficult to deploy to decrease malware and bad code? Come on, stop drinking the kool aid.

Trick is to find a balance in the process so that author of an App is legally identifiable. This is to avoid episodes like "Fake Angry Bird App" and "Fake Mobile Banking App".

IMO, when I download ETrade App on my smartphone, it is good to know that someone checked that it was submitted by someone who is from ETrade really. If the process is rigorous for E*Trade, so be it. But as an end user I'd prefer it to be that way instead of making it _my_ responsible to verify before installing the app.

Note that this is a problem both stores share:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/08/how-app-store-grifters-...

From what I understand, absent a legal judgment Apple doesn't do much to police copycats, misleading names and the like.

Malware apps come and go in both platforms, and both platforms actively try to stop malware when it's reported.

Seriously. It's documented iOS has had malware: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/07/06/...

There's a big difference between a platform with several hundred thousand known pieces of malware in the wild vs a platform with a tiny handful of what are mostly proof-of-concept apps.

Open vs closed & other religious wars aside, it's ridiculous to imply that both platforms carry the same risk to end users.

I didn't say that nor imply it. What I said was that both platforms do have documented cases of malware. The post I replied to made the obviously false claim that the iOS store has never had malware.

I'd like to point out that "in the wild" on android literally means "they're not in the play store", but rather downloaded from somewhere else.

The play store scans every submitted the apps for malware (in the last versions it also scans applications NOT installed through the play store).

I don't want to be pedantic, it's just that I know more about this platform and I would like to be corrected if I say something wrong about platforms that I'm not familiar with.

Wow! Bad karma for dissing Android! For the record - my family has every platform, including Andorid phone, kindle, and set top boxes. I personally had 2 malwares installed on my Galaxy that bricked it. Also there are way too many apps on Android that ask for information access they should not have - like my GPS location or contacts info for a game. Andoid needs a little higher bar to remove this crapware.

I highly doubt that malware could brick a phone.

If your phone was truly bricked, how did you identify that it was indeed "two malware" that bricked it?

I know of at least two security researchers that got malware into Apple's App Store.

Given the review process, the odds may be longer that a particular app is malware, but given the size of the store I think it is virtually certain there is still some undetected malware in it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com