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If android os in a device is rooted , will it be safe to use it in public networks where possibilities of attacks is more.

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The actual process of rooting an Android phone technically does not make it vulnerable, however in practice you would be installing applications with root privileges which may execute malicious code intentionally or unintentionally.

The best analogy I could come up with for this is:

Rooting your phone is like downloading pirated software. It may harm your PC, but it is most definitely not guaranteed to do so.

Therefore, I believe the security of your Andriod device depends on your capability as a user to defend your system rather than whether the device is rooted (or not).

  • Therefore, if you root your phone and never update it, it degrades security.
  • But, if you root your phone to implement a custom security patch or a service that improves security (AVs, SELinux, etc.) then that of course improves security.

Rooting has proven to be effective in reducing bloatware and certain factory installed adware. This technically does improve security marginally but also can be considered useful for removing services you have running to reduce the potential attack surface.

Apart from several Internet web resources available for securing Andriod devices, please visit the official Andriod Security Overview page for more information of the technical procedure for security hardening. Link: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/security/index.html

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    "Rooting for phone is like downloading any software..." - fixed it for you ;)
    – Gusdor
    Jul 29, 2015 at 10:40
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Rooting a phone will make it more vulnerable. There is no way around this: you're removing one layer of protection and expecting the other security measures to compensate.

Now, that doesn't makes the phone unsafe as such. It's all a question of trade-off: you're trading some security for additional functionalities (the ability to perform operations that requires root access).

Deciding if the gained functionalities are worth the risk depends entirely on the situation: who you are, what you want to defends, who you want to defend it against and what other security measures are in place.

You can even conceive situation in which the gained functionality greatly offset the risks. For instance, you could need to root your phone to install an additional security system or patch a vulnerability in the OS.

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  • Indeed. My Android device runs a version of Android less than 5.1, so the GraphicBuffer::unflatten() vulnerability affects it. (CVE-2015-1474; CVSS 10.0). As I wrote in a post elsewhere: I theoretically could root it and replace the insecure binaries; though, in practice, probably either I would do nothing or I would replace the entire "ROM" with something newer. Aug 26, 2015 at 21:22
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Rooted phones are just as secure as an unrooted phones if you never grant root permission to any apps. The problem is that if you root your phone, you're bound to give root permission (otherwise, why are you rooting your phone in the first place), and applications that you give root permission may turned out to be rogue or leak their permission to allow an untrusted applications to gain root-like permission.

Running rooted phone is safe as long as you know which app to give root access and which are not. Problem is, even assuming that you only pick trustworthy apps they still can leak permissions inadvertantly (in security parlance, this is called confused deputy problem), so you must really be careful when choosing trusted apps.

android.stackexchange (Lie Ryan)

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