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greesiltoday at 2:29 PM4 repliesview on HN

"This is notably fast given that this is the first time that an Android driver bug I reported was patched within 90 days of the vendor first learning about the vulnerability."

This makes me feel better about Google, but also makes me kind of frightened of the rest of Android. I wonder what Apple's response time is?


Replies

CobrastanJorjitoday at 4:44 PM

Android vendors have been notorious about updates for a long time. Part of that is supposedly because all of the phone companies want to distinguish themselves from each other, and so they all want to fork the default Android UI so they can offer some psychedelic UI vision with some brand-specific features. But that means that when an update to stock Android comes out, it's a lot of work to migrate.

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yogorenapantoday at 2:49 PM

I've reported security bugs to Apple before. Was a couple years back but I remember it taking around 6 months to patch (there was a couple back and forth for me to get a more reliable POC). Maybe 2 months from when I submitted a POC with 100% reproducibility

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nekitamotoday at 5:06 PM

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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kube-systemtoday at 5:26 PM

On brand-name android devices you can count on getting OS security updates. The first-party vendor can build and push these themselves. Driver and firmware security updates are a maybe. These often have to come from an upstream vendor, who may or may not care to fix the issues.

Smaller brands often ship budget android devices and never update them.