Better understanding and mitigating the risks of using a phone that no longer receives system updates - Lemmy.ca
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Too many perfectly usable phones are put into a questionable security situation by lack of vendor support for keeping key software up to date. But what’s the actual risk of using an Android phone on a stock ROM without updates? What’s the attack surface? It seems like most things that’d contact potentially malicious software are web and messaging software, but that’s all done by apps which continue to receive updates (at least until the android version is entirely unsupported) eg. Webview, Firefox, Signal, etc. So are the main avenues for attack then sketchy apps and wifi points? If one is careful to use a minimal set of widely scrutinised apps and avoid connecting to wifi/bluetooth/etc. devices of questionable provenance is it really taking that much of a risk to continue using a device past EOL? Or do browsers rely on system libraries that have plausible attack vectors? Perhaps images, video, font etc. rendering could be compromised? At this point though, that stack must be quite hardened and mature, it’d be major news for libjpg/ffmpeg to have a code-execution vulnerability? Plus it seems unlikely that they wouldn’t just include this in webview/Firefox as there must surely be millions of devices in this situation so why not take the easy step of distributing a bit more in the APK? I’m not at all an Android developer though, perhaps this is very naive and I’m missing something major?

Crosspost of an ongoing thread over at [email protected]

Some interesting discussions on the trade-off between security and being able to use your aging Android for a little while longer.

  • HousePanther@lemmy.goblackcat.comEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    While I hate relegating perfectly usable Android phones to a landfill, identity theft also sucks. The bottom line is that manufacturers should be required to supply updates for longer periods of time or provide a means to completely unlock them for free and let end users install new versions of the ROM.

  • himazawa@infosec.pubEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Perhaps images, video, font etc. rendering could be compromised?

    Yes, it already happen in the past. Also the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stack got exploited, like multiple kernel drivers.

    But it shouldn’t be a matter of “in the past was X exploited?” but more on having a correct security posture.

    Honestly if you are arguing about wasting a “perfectly working phone” you should blame it on the vendor, especially Android devices vendors have this let’s say “defect” of dropping the support after 4/5 years.

    Also not going to talk about custom ROMs (with the super rare exclusion of some) managed by god knows who, without any security team behind.

    Since even the NFC and Cellular Network stack got vulnerabilities the only way you would consider an old phone “safe” to use is just turning it into the equivalent of a local ARM server.

    Also pretty fun seeing the replies in the original post talking about how Google Play store shouldn’t have malware on it.

    • himazawa@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I believe the risk of running outdated software is super inflated and mediatic, 99% of people would be absolutely fine running a version of Android from 3 years ago or Windows 8.

      That’s the same thing people running windows XP on internet were thinking in 2017.

      Then WannaCry arrived and they got their data encrypted :)

        • himazawa@infosec.pubEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          WannaCry targeted hospitals, businesses and similar machines.

          WannaCry targeted everything with SMB exposed, blindly.

          Also, you should read more about security through obscurity, the fact that “no one will target you because you are a low-value target” is a false sense of security.