Which sense does have "blocking incoming network connections unless whitelisted"? Wouldn't that mean to block almost all the internet and whitelist on an ISP basis or do you mean something entirely different?

So Android security (if I have root access) is like Linux security, except that I would need to inform myself about the latter in great detail?

You only block incoming connections, answers to outgoing connections are of course always allowed.

With that, you prevent a number of possible exploits:
- There may be a security bug in the network stack of the operating system. By just rejecting all network packets that are not answers to an outgoing connection, the amount of affected code is less, thus the risk of it having a bug is reduced.
- It may happen that you forgot to turn of an unwanted service. By rejecting incoming connections, you can still not be affected by remote-exploitable bugs.
- There are many system services that listen to incoming connections and that you don't want to turn off because you are using them. Of course, there will always be security measures in place to prevent unauthorized access. But there could be a bug in these security measures. When preventing the incoming connection from the internet, these bugs can at least not be exploited remotely.

In general, blocking incoming connections is just an added layer of security. In a perfect world, where you can (a) assume that there all software you run is bug-free, and (b) you can be sure that no unwanted software is running, these measures would be unnecessary. Since this is not the case, you have to try to minimize the possible attack surface. Throwing away unwanted (and possibly malicious) network packets as early as possible makes sure they don't get in contact with much (possibly buggy) code.


To answer your question about Android:
It depends. At the network level, yes, since Android is running a Linux kernel, and the kernel is in charge of the network, this is the same. The same goes for file system security.
But there are more aspects to security than just these low level things. These things can't help against e.g. malicious web sites that exploit bugs in the browser (but of course preventing the browser from writing system files reduces the impact). That's application level security, and that depends (as always) on the application.

On Android, there is an additional layer: The Dalvik VM (similar to a Java VM). In general, that increases security because the VM can protect the system from buggy applications. So in principle, from an application security point of view, I would definitely trust Android more than iOS or Maemo. But I don't know much about the Dalvik VM, so I can't tell you how or even if you can customize that configuration to be more secure...

Ah, ok, the usual inbound filter. Windows does that by default in its firewall. Is there a similar default in current linux distributions and Honeycomb or are you saying that even for enabling plain ordinary inbound (packet) filtering it is necessary to have access to the root account?

Why, under Android, is denied write access to system files a matter of the browser software? Is it? Isn't it rather, I hope, like under Windows NT 6.x where ordinary programs during their regular use may not write there (except maybe during the installation)?

If you know it - is the Dalvik VM activated and running by default?

Just to throw in my 2 cents....when my old laptop died I decided to see if I could replace it with a tablet. I ended up getting an Android tablet and really quite like it (it also helped that I had been debating getting an e-Reader, so used this as a compromise). I've played with the iPad and iPad2, and for me personally I like the Android tablets interface better (though I would imagine that is mostly because I'm accustomed to Android widgets and the Android environment due to my phone...). For me I've been able to do just about all of my basic personal computing using the tablet (checking email, websurfing, go playing, etc). I guess you could almost look at it like the computer equivalent of a Smartcar....It's still nice to have a "full-power" PC around for some tasks, but for your basic daily commute so to speak, the tablet's a light way to take care of it.

Back to the original point of the post...while I like it and use it for things, I don't think my tablet is a huge bandwidth hog (except maybe for when I stream pandora...). Once my email and various newsreader apps update, I don't desperately need connectivity (also depending on how they measured it, it might not get counted at all, since my tablet is WiFi only, and wouldn't generate traffic on a mobile network).

This "security lecture" is getting quite off-topic, but I'll try to answer the questions anyway

I lurve my iPad and enjoy the wealth of Go-related apps on it

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I just got a rooted Nook which has been a lot of fun to play go and shogi apps to play on. Japanese shogi association has a pretty cool app which I would love to see for Go. I still can't get on Tygem without using Remote Desktop to do it, but I can get on wbaduk, kgs, igs, and dgs now.

In my opinion (and experience) one reason iPad enjoys such a huge market lead is the great developer toolchain. Android SDK and NDK is the single worst developer experience I have ever had, and I was really pro-android before using their SDK and NDK.

It is not something that improves with more experience either, it is simply embarrassingly bad, especially compared to iOS.
I just wish apple were more open with their platform and I think the iPad/android market ratio would be even higher.

My .02 cents.

Wow. I love the Android SDK/NDK. We either have different tastes, or else I've suffered a lot of much worse development enrvironments than you.

I agree with this. The Android SDK/NDK was the easiest development system I had set up and get started with.

@wms: IIRC you are THE man behind KGS and it’s clients … no matter what dev environment you love but are you considering resp. re-considering an iOS client for some time in the future? Or perhaps something else, like using HTML5 for the KGS playground, anything that would enable iOS users to play on KGS?

I’d definitely be willing to spill out something 10€-ish for such an animal for iOS. No idea how to do the same for an HTML5 solution, though, but I guess I’d also pay the same amount in order to support development of whatever makes it possible to play on my iPad 2.

Greetings, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Tom - check the KGS Google+ account. I was working last December on an HTML5 port. Then other things got in the way (bug fixes on the tournament system and the android client, real life, etc.) I expect to have more results soon. I won't be doing an iOS port; you can browse around here and see why, I've stated it many times.

Thanks for your quick reply, wms!

OK, sounds promising

<sniff>

I may ask again in a year or so if the HTML5 stuff shouldn’t be done then

Greetings, and thanks again,
Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Well, maybe I should clarify a bit, in particular I meant working with native code, not Java.

I really dislike working with eclipse as an IDE as well but I guess if you work with pure Java it might be an ok environment to work with. It is still vastly inferior to working with iOS though. Have you tried it out?

Since I don't own a mac the iOS development environment is not available. I'm sure it's great, I've heard good things about it. But yes, in Android I do almost all Java development, and the Android SDK is very good for that. Plus IMHO Java is very easy to debug because of some features of the JVM that Android preserved in their Dalvik VM.

Will clarify my "don't have".

Like wise don't have a cell phone as no reception where I live. Sure, could take a walk in the back yard, say climb half a mile up toward the ridge and get a signal. Or take a drive somewhere. So the device could call out but never receive a call in.

Only have a dial-up internet connection.

This is a rural area.

Why does being in a rural area matter? If you have dial up, you can still use a tablet with wifi, browse the internet and play go with a tablet instead of computer.

iPad - my children own it
and my wife uses it too (actually she got it from Hongkong - cheaper),
I bought some Go books for it
(which I also have in my cupboard)
and occasionally browse through some profess. games.

For that I use more often my HTC phone with Android.

So much to do - so few time. Took up a Chinese course again.

_________________
Greetings,
Tommie

3dan EGF (AGA no 13477) || Tommie on KGS: 'June'|| DGS: 'Zhi Laohu' 纸老虎 = 'paper tiger' || Senseis : http://senseis.xmp.net/?tderz ||
ENFP (MBTI) - 'Find your own style within the Fundamentals of Go! '

Actually, a tablet benefits more from a fast internet connection than a PC does. With a slow internet connection, you often prefer to open webpages in "batch mode", and this is more easily done on a PC. Having used an iPad as my primary computer for several months with a rather slow connection (DSL, but the house had a bad phone connection/wiring), I can attest to that.

Of course even with a slow connection, you may still find it worthwhile for the things that can be done with little or no internet connection. But that's a matter of taste.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I have an iPad... because I was given one.

I'd rather have an Android tablet but, honestly, I am never going to buy a tablet at all. When my iPad dies or grinds to a halt (something which it seems likely to do, soon) I will probably just live without a tablet.

I have played Go on IGS and KGS with my Android phone and, apart from the screen size limit, there's nothing wrong with the experience. Perhaps, one day, 9x9 will be taken seriously on online servers and we'll all learn to fight on a small board, on the train or the bus.

As a developer, I think the Android experience is vastly superior to Objective C written on a Mac. I have seen the Java experience and also dabbled with Mono-Touch - both beat the very essence out of Objective C!