An Update on Android Market Security
googlemobile.blogspot.com
googlemobile.blogspot.com
As per http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/fvepu/someone_just_... the developer of the original app had been trying to get Google to remove the offending apps for more than a week.
Google took no action until after a third party reported the problem on reddit.
The post says that Google acted "within minutes". However, it doesn't even mention the fact that the problem existed on the market for more than a week. Posting an update is fine, but it is troubling to see a post that refuses to acknowledge basic facts.
If they aren't willing to acknowledge a problem, it will be very difficult for them to prevent this and other problems from recurring.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr...
(1) The security problem existed for more than a week.
(2) Google's post makes no mention of (1). Instead it talks about how the issue didn't impact certain Android versions and about how they removed the malicious apps "within minutes"
Regardless of your views on how many i's you'd like dotted and how many ts you'd like crossed for a DMCA form, ...... do you think that a "security update" post should suppress information about the duration of the security problem and just talk about "Within minutes of becoming aware" ?
When you get security alerts from other vendors, do yours typically include the first known date of vulnerability or do they include the date it was first reported, or just the CVE assignment date? When redhat/apple/microsoft push a security update do they list the sites or programs that were known to be abusing the bugs? Not that I've seen. Hell it is rare to see anyone even listing the first date that they were being actively exploited.
All of that would be better, of course, but it hardly seems reasonable to call google out when they're acting at least as responsibly as all their competitors.
>I'm the developer of the original Guitar Solo Lite. I noticed the rogue app a bit more than a week ago (I was receiving crash reports sent from the pirated version of the app). I notified Google about this through all the channels I could think of: DMCA notice, malicious app reporting, Android Market Help...they have yet to respond.
That liability includes up to $30,000 in damages per infringement (download).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...
A proper DMCA notice requires certain information and must be sent to the Google registered DMCA agent.
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/g/google.pdf
It amazes me that developers (who hold a lot of copyright) know so little about the federal law (DMCA) designed to protect it.
So in this case, where they are said to have been properly informed, and either lacked an effective policy and/or failed to respond expeditiously they wouldn't be protected by safe harbor. Organizations need to be liable at some point or else you could just register a DMCA agent, and run a pirate site with impunity while failing to act on notices.
[1] http://www.pillsburylaw.com/index.cfm?pageid=34&itemid=3...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...
Once they were reported as trojans they were pulled the same day.
I'm not sure what is expected from google here:
Clearly they need to get a better handle on licensees pushing minor updates. That privesc has been around forever, and it's still there on my phone and that's super shitty - updating is android's achilles heel. But even if they get real good at that there will still be some exploits out there, every platform has them.
Do people expect google should be able to make it so no malicious code can ever be run? Seems like that's a battle nobody has won. Do people expect google to switch to a curated, only google approved apps marketplace? I'd sure be unhappy if they did. Do people expect google to pull apps from the marketplace on copyright complaints even if they aren't submitted/sworn correctly and potentially let all kinds of fraudulent takedown mayhem occur (because the submitter wouldn't be liable)? Seems unwise.
Do people expect google to do automated scans and blocks of suspicious code on the marketplace? Sounds like what they are planning on doing.
Most (though not all) malware detection, be it signature or behavioral relies on an engineer having analyzed it or a close relative in the past. When you have a sandbox model like Android, you really need to focus on getting exploits fixed on all your clients as a first priority. Until you get that straight you're never going to be doing much more than sticking your finger in the dike.
Right now every 2.2.x or older client is wide open to a drive by compromise when using chrome lite. So focusing too much on the marketplace may not be rational. All recent mobile Safari builds are vulnerable to a similar webkit exploit as well. Both issues were cleared in Chromium last year.
Just the PR equivalent of "nothing to see here, move along. app review? what's that? rainbows and unicorns and Androids!".
This entire saga raises several questions. Obviously, as Android’s popularity continues to surge, more and more hackers and malware writers will target it. Unfortunately, it’s clear that Google is simply in no position to mitigate these attacks before they occur. The “openness” of the Market is becoming Android’s biggest security weakness. Although most Android users have nothing but disdain for any app review system, I would welcome a change in the Market policy, whereby all submitted apps are screened for signs of malicious or fraudulent activities. Google might also need to give a serious thought to how it deploys security updates. Apple and Microsoft have full control over deploying critical system updates, unlike Google, which is at the mercy of handset manufacturers and carriers. Although the bug that was exploited by DroidDream was fixed in Android 2.2.2, hundreds of thousands of handsets were successfully compromised because Android 2.2.2 isn’t yet available for a substantial number of handsets. Unless Google can reign in the fragmentation problem, it might have to start deploying hotfixes for different versions of Android to patch critical security vulnerabilities, i.e. employ a Windows like model of distributing patches to different OS versions. [The above bit is a repost from http://bit.ly/g9xIfg , which is written by me]
Am I the only one thinking they might be planning to leverage their recent acquisition of zynamics on this front? In particular, zynamics seems to have developed some tools[1] for classifying malware based on (as I understand it) some sort of static control-flow analysis. I'm far from an expert on the matter, but that sounds like it has some potential with regards to keeping malicious apps out of the Android Market.