Google Confirms New Hacker Protection For 3 Billion Android Users
Google security updates are not exactly in short supply: Chrome browser vulnerabilities, Google Messages sender verification, and, of course, new Gmail features all vying for your attention. Sometimes, however, there's a danger of drowning in updates which leads to the most important of them potentially going unnoticed. Google has just published a posting to ensure that doesn't happen with the latest protections for Android users against hack attacks. And quite rightly so, as it's not easy protecting more than 3 billion users, with multiple risk profiles across that user base, from hackers. As Google said, 'Less sophisticated attacks by commodity malware can be very lucrative for attackers when done at scale, but so can sophisticated attacks on targeted users.' Let me, or rather Google, introduce you to Advanced Protection that does exactly what it says on the tin, allowing you to tailor your security protections to fit your personal risk profiles. Forbes Billions Of Gmail And Outlook Users At Risk — Change Your Password Now By Davey Winder
You might be forgiven for thinking that the only threat you need to worry about as an Android smartphone user is the SMS one, as attacks surge and hackers employ new mobile SMS Blaster hardware weaponry. You would, however, be very wrong indeed. Smartphone hackers have a diverse array of attacks to choose from, each targeting a different victim group and employing a different methodology. Some of the more commonly used have been picked up upon by David Adrian, Javier Castro and Peter Kotwicz from the Google Chrome Security Team in a July 8 posting.
Advanced Protection acts as an extension to Google's existing Advanced Protection Program, by providing a device-level security setting for those Android users most at risk. Think of it as being a 'single control point for at-risk users on Android that enables important security settings across applications,' Google said. This integrates with Chrome on Android, the trio of security experts explained, in three specific ways: By enabling the always use secure connections setting to protect users from hackers injecting malicious content or reading data.
By enabling full site isolation, as long as your Android device has at least 4GB of RAM, to prevent the loading of malicious sites in the same process as legitimate websites.
By reducing the attack surface through the disabling of JavaScript optimizations.
'We additionally recommend at-risk users join the Advanced Protection Program with their Google accounts,' the Google Chrome security team said, 'which will require the account to use phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication methods and enable Advanced Protection on any of the user's Android devices.'
Advanced Protection is available on Google Android 16 in Chrome version 137 and later. Forbes FBI 2FA Bypass Warning Issued — The Attacks Have Started By Davey Winder
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