While Google has managed to establish Android as the leading smartphone operating system in the world, it has failed on the big front when it comes to securing your smartphone. We're referring, of course, to regular security updates. Furthermore, the latest version of Android is currently only available on about 1% of all devices, which is another drawback.
As it turns out, Android's update problem runs much deeper than it seems. According to a study conducted by Security Research Labs, many major Android device manufacturers are lying to users about the status of their security updates, as reported by Wired.
This revelation is unexpected, as it seems like an attempt to mislead and deceive users. In a practical scenario, when we find that our device's firmware is fully up to date, we gain a false sense of security
Researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell have been working for the past two years to reverse engineer the code running on Android devices and examine whether there was a gap in the “patches.” In many cases, it was found that OEMs were hiding about a dozen “missing” patches.
Which smartphone manufacturer skipped patches and how many?
They checked smartphones from manufacturers including Google, Samsung, Nokia, Sony, HTC, LG, Motorola, TCL, and ZTE. While Sony and Samsung smartphones were found to have missed a few patches, ZTE and TCL were found to have been lying about 4 or more updates!
LG, Motorola, Huawei and HTC skipped 3-4 patches and Nokia, OnePlus and Xiaomi 1-3 on average.
In a statement, Google thanked the researchers for their work. The company tried to do some damage control, listing its mechanisms, such as Google Play Protect, which are being developed to provide an additional layer of security.
