An independent security firm, Coverity, said they have analyzed the Android kernel and found 359 bugs, of which 88 are serious.
Fast Company’s Kit Eaton said this security analysis is good news for Google, and it highlights one of the powerful components of open source: the community.
“Thanks to Android‘s open source nature, the community itself can discover these bugs and then alert Google,” Eaton wrote. “This bodes extremely well for Google’s other OS project, Chrome, which is now rumored to be arriving soon on sub-notebook PCs, as well as a Google-branded notebook PC — Chrome is also open source, meaning its weaknesses can quickly be discovered, turning it into a strength.”
The code flaw rate for Android is 1 bug for every 2,000 lines of code. That’s twice as good as the industry standard of one defect per 1,000 lines.
