In this discussion, we are again going to take a look at the iOS and the Android operating systems. For Apple users if an application that you are using requires the app to know the location, the app must show an alert that will appear on the screen requesting permission to access the current location of the user. If the user does not grant permission and the app depends on proceeding forward based the permission, then the app will basically quit working. For Android users, they make the decision as to what permissions are granted when they download the application. Once the user makes the decision and grants the desired permissions, then the download will proceed.
The iOS has a couple of security features that are rather interesting. The features are the Geo-location and the auto erase capabilities. The Geo-location app lets the users find a device that they might have lost and then at the same time erase all of that data off of that device. The app will also wipe everything off of the device if the someone finds the device and puts the passcode pin in ten different times and it is wrong each of those times.
As is true of most software, weaknesses can be found in these operating systems. For Apple devices, that use version lower than 4.3.5, they might be vulnerable to a SSL MITM or man in the middle attack as hackers can exploit this very easily. You might be wondering what the importance of this is. This is important as certain Apple devices are not allowed to upgrade to a higher firmware because of their age and will always be susceptible to attacks. Android devices run into this same issue because there are a lot of devices that are still under contract and therefore can’t be updated to the latest and greatest operating system version.
A weakness that the Android OS has is that there is not as much security in place and they are not as strict when it comes to approving submitted applications and they do not check the security of validity of these apps before they are available for sale.
Something that is fascinating is that even though both have security vlunerabilities, they are actually more secure than the PC operating systems.
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