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What's the most secure mobile os for the average day to day user concerned with protecting online banking, personal data, photos etc?

And is the new Ubuntu mobile os likely to have the same security benefits of a Linux desktop distribution?

Ben
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    Unfortunately, this question is up to debate and opinion, depending on your threat model. – schroeder Dec 22 '15 at 18:28
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    I agree with @schroeder. Arguments can be made from all sides but it would be entirely opinions and no substance. Additionally, it almost seems like you're differentiating between Ubuntu and Linux even though Ubuntu _is_ Linux. I don't mean to seem rude, I just don't really understand what you're asking. – Pierce Dec 22 '15 at 21:24

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You question assumes that any of the current OS is secure enough at all for online banking etc. I doubt this, and it is less a problem of the underlying OS than of the applications. Just to cite from a recent article iOS banking app security: getting better, but still bad!:

  • 12.5% of the apps didn’t validate the authenticity of the SSL certificates presented, making them susceptible to MiTM attacks.
  • 30% of the apps didn’t validate incoming data and were vulnerable to JavaScript injections via insecure UIWebView implementations. allowing client-side attacks.
  • ...

Thus while the underlying OS can offer a reasonable security architecture it does not matter if the applications itself mess it up. And while the existing oversight over the various app stores might detect some (but not all) explicit malware it is unable to detect application with insecure design which are nevertheless used for sensitive tasks. This is similar to doing online banking on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux - if the website for online banking is vulnerable against XSS attacks or similar it does not matter which underlying OS you use, because the vulnerability will affect all.

Therefore in my opinion there is no "most secure" OS. There are only different levels of insecurity but the specifics highly depend on your use case.

Steffen Ullrich
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