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Are there any risks to rooting a device?

What are the security risks specific to rooting your android smartphone? Are there any security exploits available because you have a rooted android that are prevented on non rooted androids? Examples or links to more info would be greatly appreciated.

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marked as duplicate by Al Everett Dec 1 '11 at 13:26

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2 Answers

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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.

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Some malwares can escalate to root permissions even on a un-rooted phone. Like the one they just recently found in over 50 (popular) apps on the android market.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/221247/droiddream_becomes_android_market_nightmare.html

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They were copies of popular apps, not the popular apps themselves. – Aistina Mar 3 '11 at 11:07
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By popular I meant that they have been downloaded many times. But indeed they were copies of relatively well-known apps with malware code added to them. – DrDro Mar 3 '11 at 13:32
I didn't think any of the Android trojans so far actually bothered to escalate to root? They just asked for more permissions than that sort of app generally needs, and that gave them enough access to do all they wanted? That is after all what a classic trojan does, gets you to let it in and give it the access it wants. – GAThrawn May 23 '11 at 16:16

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