this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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wouldn't a malicious app still be an exploit though? I'd say that if I download an app for playing a game, but instead it was designed to also upload my private photos to the attacker's server, i'd say that's still exploiting. It's just exploiting my expectations of what the app should do, rather than leveraging a system weakness (which it probably does, anyway)
You’d have to grant the app permission to access your photos. At this point, I would say the problem is more the person in the driver’s seat. You can’t really protect the user from themselves. If you had a legitimate reason to grant access to your photos, then we definitely have a problem.
You can think of this as a kind of exploit if you prefer. However, this becomes a permissions and ecosystem and reputation issue and not really a technical software one. Because you’re looking at a totally different set of tools, I think it’s useful to restrict exploit to refer only to bugs.
You could take that argument one step further and ask what if my new phone comes with preinstalled malware? The system collapses if you can’t have some level of trust the software you’re running.