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Think Android is especially vulnerable to hackers and spammers? The US military disagrees with you.
Samsung smartphones running a very secure version of Android have been approved for use by the US Department of Defense. Before today, only Blackberry smartphones had been approved for military use.
There were reports in the past of soldiers testing out secure builds of Android for use during military missions but this is the first time that the Android OS has actually been officially approved for use during combat.
"The US DoD has about 600,000 smartphone users, said Col Pickart, about 470,000 of whom were using Blackberry handsets. The remainder was split between people using both Google Android and Apple phones in a series of trials to assess whether the devices could be used securely"
The US military is planning on doubling the number of secure mobile devices used by their armed forces by 2014. The plan is to also create an app store filled with only the most secure apps.
All military-approved devices must be put through rigorous testing, and only Samsung's Knox, the company's work and personal siloing software, has so far been approved. It's unknown just what kind of tests the software was put through, but I'm sure cyber and phishing attacks were simulated.
It's unclear whether the military is developing any apps for controlling drones, but that could be a possibility.
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