Some weeks (days) ago, a security analyst with Rapid7, Tod Beardsly revealed that all Android versions below Android 4.4 Kitkat OS are suffering from a bug which leaves them very vulnerable to serious malicious hack attacks.
The bug is said to found in the Android Webview – which allows apps views websites without using another browser; and devices running Android 4.3 OS downwards are the ones affected. The flaw affects roughly 939 million Android handsets around the world.
While Google has maintained it wouldn’t do anything about the bug, the company through Adrian Ludwig, the head of Android Security issued a long statement through his Google+ page explaining why Google is not looking to fix, patch or get rid of the bug.
“Keeping software up to date is one of the greatest challenges in security. .. the affected software has more than 5 million lines of code and fixing bugs in it could require “changes to significant portions of the code and was no longer practical to do safely.”
The bug doesn’t affect Android 4.4 Kitkat and Android 5.0 Lollipop Users; so users of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean OS (and below) are advised to download updated versions of Google Chrome and Firefox browsers. Both browser versions are securely updated through Google Play Store and have their own content renderer.
Firefox works on Android 2.3 OS (upwards) while Google Chrome works on Android 4.0 (upwards). Using an updatable browser ensures that users are protected from current issues and since it would also be updates in the future, it also covers future issues that might arise.
