

It's time for Apple to open up - NickSarath
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/its-time-for-apple-to-open-up/

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zomgbbq
It is worth noting that Xsser only affected jail-broken phones so the point of
the article, that Apple's "closed-ness" was to fault here, is a factual error.
In fact, it is that very closed-ness that prevents these types of software off
of the AppStore.

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joshstrange
Wow, what a worthless article, they conveniently left out that Xsser only
affected jailbroken phones (Which in the course of jailbreaking them opened up
new vectors of attack that are not Apple's fault).

Also AV on my phone? NO THANK YOU. I even stopped running AV on my windows
machine before I switched to Mac/Linux because it was more trouble than it's
worth and at the end of the day the user has to be smart enough not to fuck
themselves over or not have enough permissions to fuck themselves over. Apple
solves this by not giving them enough permissions. It works quite well and has
kept the iOS platform very secure.

I really do believe that iOS and Android have nearly equivalent levels of
outside security. The difference is that Android allows for apps to do nearly
anything while iOS apps are limited. These limits are why we have never (or at
least I haven't) heard of a malicious app in the iOS store yet we have heard
of countless malicious apps distributed through play and other third-party
apps. You can't have full access and "free" security (Free as in you don't
have to think or worry about it) in one package. Android chose full access and
iOS chose security, end of story.

Power users like most people on HN are going to complain about iOS because
it's so locked down but let's please take a step back and realize that a large
majority of the population need that protection. If you want more freedom go
jailbreak your phone (I do) and just know that you are doing it at a risk to
your security and you need to be careful.

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Mikeb85
Anti-virus is crap. Most AV apps I've used might as well be viruses
themselves. Thankfully I now use Linux and Android, which are both fairly
secure so long as you follow a few common sense rules.

As far as Apple is concerned, their sandboxed apps, closed stores and Unix-y
way of handling code and permissions should also be secure enough to negate
the need for anti virus...

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cjensen
An anti-virus vendor really wishes Apple would let them sell software to
Apple's customers. Of course, they'll need Apple to first remove the
sandboxing requirement so they can snoop on other apps. Conveniently, that
will open up a brand new attack surface...

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kidde
This piece is bullshit. Show me any piece of malware running on a non-
jailbroken iOS device! Apple opening up their platforms would be nice for many
reasons, but this is not one of them.

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CamperBob2
One point I'd raise is that we don't know how much malware might be available
on the App store. Apple doesn't require source escrow. Smart malware authors
might be able to fly under the radar for a long time under Apple's conditions,
leading to a false sense of security.

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IBM
It would be great for the security industry if Apple opened up.

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CamperBob2
History shows that they won't even do that under extreme competitive pressure,
which they don't really have now in the market segments they care about. The
last time someone won an "openness" argument at Apple was when Woz pinned Jobs
to the mat over slots in the Apple II.

