The mythbusters are back, and this time one of the all time popular myths regarding iOS has been busted. According to a new study, it turns out that iOS isn’t as malware-proof as people have come to believe. In fact, reports suggest that Android is safer and more secure than iOS.
The study carried out by Checkmarx and AppSec Labs claim that Apple’s ‘wall garden’, that is the App Store, is filled with apps that have greater percentage of critical or high severity security vulnerabilities when compared to Android apps.
According to the report, a critical vulnerability is defined as one “that exposes a major security risk with a direct exploit (not needing user involvement). If exploited, the security threat might cause major damage to the application and/or have major impact on the company.”
Here’s what the claim means for everyone. Firtsly, it breaks the image of iOS being regarded as the most fool-proof operating system. Secondly, it also means that there is now no safe operating system out there as all the major players are now on the same boat. Of course, it was only a matter of time for a report such as this to come out. Hackers do tend to target big names, especially ones that claim to be unbreakable.
“With more than 1.5 million apps available in the two main app stores, Apple and Android, and hundreds of billions of downloads to date, the mobile landscape has quickly become the main playground for hackers and attackers.”
As the reports suggest, 36 percent of Android apps were found to be potentially critical or highly severe while a surprising 40 percent of iOS apps were deemed critical, crushing the common misconception that iOS is a safer platform.
There seems to be some credibility to this report, especially after the recent news that a popular app on the App Store, called InstaAgent, has been leaking Instagram username and passwords and sending them off to a remote server as well as publishing unauthorized images to users account without their consent.
Checkmarx’s Amit Ashbel explained to GeekTime that most of the security flaws are the result of vulnerabilities in developers’ code. “The mobile application industry as a whole is lagging behind on secure coding best practices,” he added.
Well, that’s one less thing for iPhone users to brag about now.
Source: [tw-button size=”medium” background=”#07ABE2″ color=”” target=”_blank” link=”https://www.checkmarx.com/2015/11/05/the-state-of-mobile-app-security/”]Checkmarx[/tw-button]
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