Why are phones always so vulnerable?

Because everyone is under the impression that they're invulnerable to attacks and flaws.

>>59854046
inb4 some macfag says iphones can't get hacked

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All phones, even dumb phones, are being tracked

You can't win

>>59854046
Why do "arstechnica" give us meaningless headlines if they are supposedly a tech publication? You'd expect something some ignorant headline like that from a tabloid newspaper or something.

Real story is that the firmware for Broadcom's BCM4339 wifi chip used in some android phones is exploitable by using special wifi frames which causes a buffer overflow which can be used to run arbitrary code on the wifi chip.

>Simple mitigation? Don't connect to random WiFi hotspots

Easiest fix in the world. You don't even have to do anything. In fact, by not doing anything, you've already fixed it

>>59854046
Primarily because software updates are dependent on carriers.

>>59854305

Not if you have an iPhone or Nexus/Pixel, the only smartphones worth owning.

>>59854305
>updates are dependent on carriers.
Carries do not make phones. They are as responsible for updating your phones software as gas stations are for fixing the transmission box on your car if that breaks.

I realize that people in the US buy their phones from carriers because they are too poor to pay cash and believe the carriers are somehow required to maintain their phones even though they are clearly not manufacturing them. I have no idea why.

In the rest of the world we pay cash for our phones and if we buy a Xianomi phone then we expect Xianomi to make firmware available. If we buy a Samsung then we expect Samsung, who actually made the phone, to give us updates. You get the idea.

In the rest of the world we do not believe that the utility service where we get electricity are responsible for fixing our fridge if that breaks.

>>59854335
Listen up you fucking kumquat, the people who sell the fucking devices makes the rules, and the people who buy devices play by them.

Obviously it's a fucking shitty system that doesn't make sense, but I never said it was a good one and I'm not defending it.

Don't shit on me for being the bearer of bad news.

>>59854356
The obvious question is: Why would you buy a phone from your carrier?

And yes, I'm really asking because this has always puzzled me.

People from the US always whine about "muh carrier doesn't update my phone". Always. I really am curious to know why.

>>59854232
is this the trap with a squeaky voice

>>59854335
That's not true. All countries have a thing called, "carrier phones," where they use a special version of the device's firmware that comes preinstalled with crap the telecom developed.

>>59854397
It's cheap and carriers advertise all the time, to the point where I don't think most people know they can buy phones straight from the manufacturer.

>>59854046
>Android is an insecure mess from the start based on a Loonix kernel older than most users
>there is no money in making it secure since poorfags don't give a damn
>it's widely used, making it an attractive target

>>59854202
Which is practically true. Nothing is 100% secure but iPhone is secure enough to make cracking into someones phone a waste of time unless it's a state actor.

Why on Earth would you connect your smartphone to a random untrusted network

It's just clickbait. You read all the fucking time about some new exploit but they require some obscure way of being executed and they're always just proof of concept and never live exploits that are used in the wild.