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Comment by nekitamo | Hacker News Reader

Given that 42% of Android devices are unpatched as of now [1] it's an interesting decision on their part to release their research and make them all vulnerable

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share [2] https://www.cybersecurity-insiders.com/survey-reveals-over-1...

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That's perennially the case. A big portion of the world buys bargain-basement android devices that are unsupported right out of the box.

Search "android phone" on aliexpress and there's top selling phones on the first page running android 8, android 10, etc. They're not getting security updates of any sort, let alone driver updates.

It frustrates me no end that there's so many fly-by-night Android phones available from China. But with zero way to change the software on them. It's not even like they're running weird chips either.

It would be nice to find one where the bootloader is unlockable, and you can just build a standard Android image and flash it..

The old way of keeping security bugs private is just completely broken now. If you aren't on a device that gets security updates you are in significant danger, regardless of what Google decides to publish. No name hackers are sitting on stacks of exploits these days and are actively using them.

"Now"

Everything you describe is absolutely nothing new. It's literally where the name "0day" comes form.

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