BlackBerry responds to reports of Dutch forensic team hacking its phones

15 January, 2016
"BlackBerry devices remain as secure and private as they have always been," the company said.

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  • M
  • Myntex
  • RYg
  • 18 May 2017

The reason the messages were able to be de-crypted was due to extremely negligent PGP hosting policies. They were storing all the private encryption keys on their servers along with a record of all the messages. These are two EXTREMELY bad things to do when hosting a PGP Encryption service.

This wasn’t a case of anything being hacked, this would be equivalent to saying your PC got hacked when you left a Post-It note on your monitor with your password on it.

Reputable PGP Service providers do not store their users messages, or more importantly their private keys on their servers.

This was a case of neglect, not a case of anyone being hacked.

    • N
    • NoNonsense
    • 4K1
    • 25 Aug 2016

    It's all a lie - First of all a legit forensic team would not get involved into corporate matters revealing a phone manufacturer's flaws. If so, they would have kept it confidential due to being a government agency conducting an investigation.
    If by any chance they hacked the phone and chose to brag about their "smartness" they would have provided sufficient proof how they did it, to support their claim.
    This seems nothing else than a false hype of another company or group of I'll-willed people hype intending to damage BlackBerry's reputation.

      • M
      • Manik Sudhera
      • g3C
      • 24 Jan 2016

      AnonD-228435, 16 Jan 2016I doubt the encryption was broken. As with any mobile phone... moreBalckberry is very secure phone but what mechanism did hackers use to break Encryption and get encryption keys in their hand to decrypt secure messages and what size of encryption keys used by customers end to secure messages its important .

        • D
        • AnonD-248589
        • r6Q
        • 18 Jan 2016

        So many lies Blackberry. It was a Blackberry 9720 using PGP encryption. So everything on BBOS is cracked and all the governments, including the US that still use them have to dump it ASAP.

          • D
          • AnonD-252981
          • Gja
          • 16 Jan 2016

          I'm not a Blackberry fan and have never owned a BB device ever, but I think in this case their OS is still very secure, else why is the hacking team not providing clear details of how they hacked the OS . They don't even provide what device with what OS version was hacked. Do we even know if they really did this or not when the info is so thin on the ground.

          I think Blackberry has responded appropriately in this situation, until further details are provided. A claim of hacking a device with such poor details seem like just a way to discredit Blackberry's system.

            • D
            • AnonD-228435
            • 0Rf
            • 16 Jan 2016

            I doubt the encryption was broken. As with any mobile phone if there is no password or the password is broken then all messages can be read. If this wasn't so then it would be very difficult to read messages.

              • ?
              • Anonymous
              • GwU
              • 15 Jan 2016

              You have entire nation states putting their resources behind attacking the BB10 stack because it is used by the US government. Meanwhile, BlackBerry has laid off so many developers and cannot attract top talent, that they stumble getting basic things like BBM updates for multiple platforms out the door. They still use an antiquated Android runtime and a a deprecated Qt for BB10 native apps, and since the source code is not available, who knows what undisclosed vulnerabilities exist?

              BB10 fans, its time to move on. BlackBerry has, now your operating system is vulnerable, and BlackBerry doesn't even have the ability to even verify the flaw, much less patch it.

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • utC
                • 15 Jan 2016

                Against little information, Blackberry responded appropriately. Provide more evidence and details and let us see how Blackberry respond.

                  • S
                  • Sunil
                  • YTd
                  • 15 Jan 2016

                  Just to defame bb. Bb is most secure ever in the world

                    • D
                    • AnonD-257839
                    • mir
                    • 15 Jan 2016

                    Basically no response at all.

                    They know little and couldnt deny it happened. They just stand that the bb is secure which it isnt since it was hacked. Basically an empty response.

                      • J
                      • John Joe
                      • KS7
                      • 15 Jan 2016

                      that's alarming and disturbing