Pentagon Opens Network to iOS and Android, Dealing Huge Blow to BlackBerry | Hacker News Reader

Pentagon Opens Network to iOS and Android, Dealing Huge Blow to BlackBerry

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25 pointsharlox12 comments

My understanding is that Android devices with custom images (SELinux-type-stuff compiled into the kernel) have been allowed on their network for some time. This wasn't just contractor-spec custom hardware - employees were allowed to use their personal Android devices provided this stuff had been installed.

So, the big news here is that that's no longer required, and that stock Android devices will now be allowed.

Do you have a source on that? I have been following Android news related to the govt and haven't seen that. I am aware of SEAndroid from NSA but not about devices running being allowed on DoD networks.

No official source. Just conversations with friends who work for various agencies when they abruptly switched despite professing their undying love for their iPhones.

It's entirely possible to run Android on DoD networks, it just takes a lot of work to certify it and the restrictions of what you can do with the device make it almost useless.

I’m a bit surprised there is no mention of Windows Phone 8 whatsoever. I would have thought that places like the Pentagon would be an important niche for it.

"many US citizens are now embarrassed to own BlackBerrys"

That was unnecessary. Unless the author is shorting RIM.

Well if it is an opinion piece I think that is pretty much true. I have a cell phone that is not a 'smart phone'. Just one with a slidy type keyboard. There have multiple times I have been made fun of or heard sarcastic remarks about my phone being outdated. It is funny it is only 2 or 3 years old model. I don't care much but it sort of illustrates what the attitudes out there are.

Also people in charge of making purchasing decisions at Pentagon have iPhones and iPads at home and they see the difference between the device they are supposed to use for work and the ones they use at home. And a lot of it is not that Blackberry is terrible, it does its job, it is just that iPhones and latest Android devices have moved so far ahead and comparatively they look so much better.

The best way to handle people like that is to preemptively strike. Try chuckling at them whenever they have to charge their phone.

Hmm... I thought that they would want to limit it to one or the other, for security purposes.

How do you mean?

It only makes sense to use a single platform if that platform has proven to be more secure than the others. Neither Android nor iOS has proven to be inherently more secure than the other (both have had plenty of in-the-wild exploits... the basis of most jailbreaking is due to such exploits).

If neither platform is provably more secure, it makes more sense to allow both because in a fully homogeneous environment a single new exploit opens all the doors while in a mixed system environment, it only opens a subset of them.

If it's not a BYOD environment, you can pick one specific recent Android handset, or replace the OS with a custom image, and you have about 80% of what iOS allows for management (which is in turn about 80% of what BES provided).

In a BYOD environment (which my current company is piloting), Android makes it much more of a nightmare, but thankfully almost everyone here has iPhones.

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