Comment by red_admiral
4 days ago
However, this hack could have happened whether sideloading was allowed or not.
In fact, following the OP's link to https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targ..., "the company’s ads were shown on almost 200,000 unique websites and Android/iOS apps in dozens of countries" so it's not just apps but ordinary websites you visit in your android chrome browser.
Yes, Google's move to block people from installing software on their own devices is orthogonal to this. I was merely saying that some measures have massive negative effects and basically irrelevant positive effects in the grand scheme of things.
So there's some sort of Android/iOS vulnerability in Chrome/Safari that they're exploiting?
No info on if a recent version patches this?
It also mentions a "Windows DLL" - so they're somehow infecting Windows desktop too?
My understanding is that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of high impact vulnerabilities on Chrome/Safari. We don't get to hear about most of them because it would become tedious quickly.