An attack on gadgets? Do applications affect vulnerabilities to hackers?
Associate Professor at the Institute of Cybersecurity and Information Protection of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (part of the 5-100 project) Evgeny Zhukovsky spoke about how applications preinstalled on smartphones and computers affect the information security of devices, whether they will become more vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Can preinstalling apps make a device more vulnerable?
-The more applications are installed on the device, the more there are potential points of penetration into the system for an attacker. But the main factor is not the number of pre-installed applications, but their quality in terms of security. It should also be remembered that modern applications, especially mobile ones, are only a small part of the infrastructure that provides services to the user. providing services to the user. Application security is also determined by the security of the entire infrastructure, including the third-party services used. Including information systems that process user data.
Can developers make their apps more secure?
If you study the current version of the list of pre-installed Russian applications, then most are developed by large players in the domestic IT industry, which have such public programs that allow them to receive information about tens and hundreds of security problems from third-party researchers. Of course, this makes the product safer. Unfortunately, for some applications indicated in the list of pre-installed ones, we could not find information about the presence of bugbounty programs, and therefore, the level of their security raises big questions.
So are pre-installed apps dangerous?
