One for Robert

[hyperpape]

My point was this:
Windows users are the biggest target. Therefore, the most time and the most resources are invested in breaching Windows security. Therefore, its security is breached the most. Therefore, it is by definition a less secure system - even if in feature-by-feature comparison it might hold its own. This is all I am saying.

I think Android is more common than Windows.

[Bantari]

My point was this:
Windows users are the biggest target. Therefore, the most time and the most resources are invested in breaching Windows security. Therefore, its security is breached the most. Therefore, it is by definition a less secure system - even if in feature-by-feature comparison it might hold its own. This is all I am saying.

I think Android is more common than Windows.

With respect to their individual spaces, I am not sure what you say is true.
Windows has over 90% of desktop/laptop use, while Android only has around 60% of mobile use, according to my very fast and dirty looksee.
If these numbers are true, then I also doubt that Android is more common than Windows in absolute sense. It is true that mobile is more used than desktops these days, but the mobile numbers are not yet higher enough to overcome the 30% gap, I think. Although, I might well be wrong, so if you have better numbers, let me know.

Anyway, in this context, regardless of total numbers, the effort at hacking Windows should be much more consolidated than that at hacking Android.

__________

Mobile devices are a different animal altogether, so I am not really sure if this applies. Have not thought about it much, so maybe it does. But my understanding was that mobiles have addiltional layers of hardware and software security built in by default, which are not (and probably can not) be present on desktops. For multiple reasons. This makes them much safer out of the box, but also more limited.

[hyperpape]

Android has the highest shipments of any OS by far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_sha ... ng_systems, but I can't quite find anything that indicates installed base on that page.

Android security has been ...criticized...: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10474660
including in the presentation I linked to.

[hyperpape]

including in the presentation I linked to.

About that! It turns out that my attempt to link to the slides was not successful. The actual talk was "COMSEC, Beyond Encryption" from 2015 (so more recent) and even more vulgar than the one that I actually linked to (NSFW). Feel free to look it up.

[Bantari]

Android has the highest shipments of any OS by far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_sha ... ng_systems, but I can't quite find anything that indicates installed base on that page.

Android security has been ...criticized...: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10474660
including in the presentation I linked to.

Interesting.
I wonder if it would also hold if they combined all the Windows versions into one category.
Or split all the Android versions into separate categories.

The way the data is presented is misleading. Which does not mean it is not true.

My own quick googling got me the following: https://www.netmarketshare.com/operatin ... pcustomd=1 which assumes Win has +90% in its space (desktop+laptop) while Android has +60% among mobiles.

But then here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-federa ... g-systems/ they seem to quote government data from last year which combined results, and Win is at ca 58% in first place, while Android is in 3rd place at 13.9% behind iOS at 16.4%. Last year's data, but still... did it change that fast that drastically?

It seems we can find any data supporting any hypothesis on the internet. So I still have no clue.

And yet, for the purpose of this discussion, my gut feeling tells me that Win has an absolutely overwhelming market share within the target group = Go player(s) paranoid about system security yet year after year unwilling to switch to a system more secure than Win.

Can you find any solid numbers on that?