Android is the most broadly used versatile platform in the market today. More than 1.4 billion individuals use Android devices such as smartphones or tablets each and every day, and the way that its open source and free for makers to utilize is a major part of that popularity. But it can act as a double-edged sword, i.e. a situation has come up where maximum android devices are not updated with the latest security patches.
As Cyware cited, the shadow of dangerous malware has made their way for targeting android devices for the past few years. As per the researchers, many high profile vulnerabilities have been covered within the span of time. Recently, a malware called as 'False Guide malware' was discovered that nearly impacted around 1.8 million android users.
What does that mean? Are android devices really easy to hack? Is the platform insecure for its users? These are the questions that must be tingling on the mind of android users after viewing such reports on the vulnerabilities of the platform. "No, it's not insecure. I do think we have a bit of a perception problem, but it's very different from actual user risk," the director of Android Security said these lines answering to the above queries in a recent interview.
Digital Trends reported that the latest versions of android devices are more secured if compared to their previous versions. The main problem where the security breach arises is from the user's side. If the device is not being updated when any latest update is being released, the device is like to become less secure as compared to the updated android devices.
If the figures are being looked at for the versions of android for android devices, the data shows that only 4.9 percent of the android devices have the latest version of android in it. The latest versions of android are Nougat 7.0 or 7.1.
On approx. 31.2 percent of devices, android 6.0 Marshmallow is being run. Around 31 percent of devices are running with android 5.0 or 5.1 Lollipop and other android devices are running still with android 4.4 KitKat. Most of the older versions of android remain not updated making them more vulnerable to malware and cause a security breach to the device.
