Have BlackBerry Devices Be Pwned By Cops?
If you have a BlackBerry device because you want something that has a reputation for being secure, you may want to think twice about that. Cops in two countries are claiming that they can read encrypted data from BlackBerry devices. Here’s what Naked Security has to say on this:
The story originally broke when Dutch website Misdaadnieuws (Crime News) published documents from the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), a Dutch law enforcement agency, stating that police were able to access deleted messages and read encrypted emails on so-called BlackBerry PGP devices.
A representative from NFI confirmed that “we are capable of obtaining encrypted data from BlackBerry PGP devices,” according to a report from Motherboard.
On Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) also told Motherboard they can crack encrypted messages on PGP BlackBerrys.
The PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy, a program for encrypting and authenticating data that is often used to encrypt email.
There is one catch that I would like to point out:
PGP BlackBerry devices, however, are not sold by BlackBerry, but by resellers like GhostPGP, which customizes BlackBerry devices with PGP encryption.
So this might be a crack of software used on BlackBerry devices rather than the devices themselves. But even if that is true (which at this point it’s not clear), the optics suck. After all, BlackBerry markets itself using the security card. Take that away and what incentive does one have to buy one. Now the reasonable thing to do is to wait and see what details emerge so that one can get better understanding of this situation. But I am not sure that BlackBerry users and those who buy BlackBerry products may do that.
July 13, 2017 at 7:36 pm
As we have all seen, the proof was never released. No court documents were made public, and BlackBerry devices are still just as secure as they’ve always been.