Fanboys of Apple Infosec are not known to seek for empathy of any sort nor do they have time for people that cannot afford iPhone revered for its phone security among other things that surround them. However, there is one thing that works for them. Apple’s App Store is known to protect its product from hackers to a large extent unlike what is obtainable with that of Google’s Play Store.
Jon Sawyer in a recent post sounded that fact loud and clear. He has been known to hack into everything that has to do with Android. He was even contacted to do a job for a law enforcement agency by a forensic specialist.
Sawyer was told by the agency that they had a phone in their possession that could break or make a sensitive case. They had initially tried on their own to see if they could get access to the phone’s files so as to get some data but did not succeed.
After Sawyer verified their purpose and identity he got to work immediately. He said that by making use of a backdoor, he and his team were able to get full access and extract the needed data from the phone. He said it got him wondering if the whole thing was a scam and if there was a secure storage app somewhere that encrypted videos and photos in a different layer of security.
He then embarked on a search on Google’s app store to see if there was a way to see anything that has “Secure Photo” and then took the first result he got. Sawyer after some search found out that indeed they files were encrypted, however, the PIN was stored in nothing but a plain text. This was in not the way to secure data in an app away from hackers.
After he was done with that and found it too easy, he moved on to the next search result.
All this is to tell illustrate how easy it is for an app that boasts of being secured in Google Store may not really be so. Apple, on the other hand, has some upper hand in the sense that although they might have a history of treating developers like they are nothing or not having strong enough secured iOS like its users would want it to be, they, however, remain the best when it comes to app security.
The new phone that Google is bringing out, Pixel phone is not going to be having the same security issue like other apps in Google Store. The phones will be having updates as well as security refreshes. This does not in any way mean that there all the apps in Google Store are as secured as they claim to be.
