iGeneration

Charlie Osborne
Home / News & Blogs / iGeneration

British spy agency called in to crack BlackBerry encryption

By | August 17, 2011, 1:59pm PDT

Summary: British intelligence services are attempting to crack the BlackBerry encryption, in order to prevent the spread of further riots.

It wouldn’t be the first time that British spooks have cracked a seemingly impossible code.

British intelligence service, MI5 has been drafted in to assist its sister service, GCHQ in cracking the BlackBerry encryption code, in order to find those responsible for disseminating messages which perpetuated riots in London earlier this month.

(Image via Flickr)

While the encryption between Messenger devices is yet to be cracked, police resorted to old fashioned methods to access the BlackBerry Messenger service — by confiscating phones of those caught rioting.

Amid further disruption across London, the Guardian report that Scotland Yard officers were able to physically access BlackBerry messages, hours before the attacks were meant to take place.

Police would, in case of further riots, find it greatly beneficial to access real-time communications of BlackBerry users, to track where protests and riots may take place. On the other hand, the legalities involved are tetchy.

BlackBerry Messenger is heavily encrypted — and it is not clear whether Research in Motion, the manufacturer of the young-focused smartphones, is able to hand over the encryption keys. Further to this, it is not clear whether the BlackBerry maker even stores Messenger data on its servers, making further arrests by police difficult.

Earlier this year, GCHQ’s government testing service announced that BlackBerrys are secure enough for government use — leading to questions as to whether BlackBerrys are in fact crackable.

BlackBerrys pose a serious problem for governments and law enforcement when found to be used for illegal or criminal activity.

BlackBerry enterprise email is just as secure as BlackBerry Messenger for the consumer-focused group. Having said that, it is not clear whether Research in Motion has the encryption keys for BlackBerry Messenger — knowing full well that it doesn’t for individual server setups.

Related content:

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “iGeneration”

Topics

London, RIM BlackBerry, Encryption, Riot, BlackBerry Messenger, Mobile Operating Systems, Handhelds, Hardware, Zack Whittaker

Zack Whittaker, a criminologist who studied at the University of Kent, Canterbury, is a journalist, writer and broadcaster.

Disclosure

Zack Whittaker

I worked briefly with Microsoft UK in 2006 but no longer have any connection with the company. Regardless, I remain impartial and unbiased in my views.

I don't hold any stock or shares, investments or industrial secrets in any company, but have signed confidentiality agreements with a number of UK and U.S. organisations, whose names I am not at liberty to disclose.

I was involved with Kent Union, the University of Kent's student union, undertaking voluntary, non-salaried, elected positions between early 2009 and mid-2010.

No other company, body, government department, non-governmental organisation or third sector organisation employs me or pays me a salary in any capacity whatsoever.

As a freelance journalist, whenever expenses are given and taken by a company that is not CBS Interactive, these will be disclosed in each relevant post to ensure transparency.

I currently work with a UK law enforcement unit, but this is an entirely separate position which bears no connection to other work.

(Updated: 23rd October 2011)

Biography

Zack Whittaker

Zack Whittaker, criminologist who studied at the University of Kent, UK, is a journalist, writer and broadcaster.

After studying criminology at university, though still in his early-20's, he has already had a series unconventional work and voluntary positions. He has worked with researchers studying neurological illnesses like Tourette's syndrome (which he suffers from), has given lectures on the nature of disabilities in the public community, and occasionally ends up speaking on television and radio discussing the events of the day.

He first had academic work published at the age of 22, then still an undergraduate, and has been cited by a wide range of publications: from the Huffington Post, Business Insider, AllThingsDigital, The Atlantic Wire and CBS News.

Talkback Most Recent of 14 Talkback(s)

  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    I can just hear it now:

    "BBM" - "Bond Broke Messenger"
    ZDNet Gravatar
    reklissrick
    17th Aug
  • Wow....
    Wow... the power of a BlackBerry.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    visualambrosia
    17th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    Minister, we have some good news, some bad and some worse. The good news is that we've managed to "crack" the Blackberry encryption. The bad news is that it doesn't really get us much that we couldn't get in other ways. The worse news is that because of the successful crack, we're de-certifying Blackberry for Government use; you'll have to turn yours in, sir.

    Disclaimer: fictional scene. I think there's a pretty good chance they won't in fact be able to break it.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    dqkennard
    18th Aug

  • ZDNet Blogger

    RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @dqkennard I agree. I don't think they can break it, either. Worth a shot though, right?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    zwhittaker
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @zwhittaker Well, it depends. If they get support from their allies across The Pond, they should be able to break it. MI5 might not have planned ahead, but I would be surprised if the CIA and NSA haven't already built high-speed key generating crackers for exactly this kind of problem.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    mejohnsn
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    MI5 is being bought in for a reason, and it is not the Mathematical capabilities or there technological resources, after all its GCHQ job to provide those to MI5.

    I suspect they are not even going to brother with try to crack the code instead they will steal the encryption keys from RIM or who ever have them and probably implant a high level individual with in the company able to keep on feeding this information to the security services, plus details of the operating systems, and so fourth.

    I could see GCHQ and MI5 implanting software onto the Blackberry OS to enable backdoor for which GCHQ can use to hack the phones directly.

    For example imagine if GCHQ could send out a programme to everyone in a riot area, and then programme beams back unencrypted messages to the security services. As well as the locations of those phones long after the rioting has stopped.

    One thing for sure if GCHQ will eventually fine some way to penetrate the system, whether that cracking the code or getting to the messages before they are encrypted in the first place.

    I guest we will know whether it is true that GCHQ is at least 5 to 10 years ahead of publicly available encryption and decryption technologies or perhaps not, may be they already know they can crack the black berry security and this is just misdirection of there part to hide there capabilities from foreign powers. After all I am sure if they could already read the messages, putting out the myth that they are uncrackable might lead to more criminals and intelligence agencies using the devices in the first place and thus more easily obtainable information for GCHQ and MI5/6 to use.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Knowles2
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @Knowles2 Risk a major international relations incident by parachuting spies into Canada to invade RIM just to deal with soccer hooligans gone wild? Highly unlikely.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    jgm@...
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @Knowles2

    In other words, a side-channel attack. Exactly what I was thinking...
    ZDNet Gravatar
    kfan
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    You can't have it both ways. You want something that is secure enough for government, but you want to be able to crack it at the same time. I would imagine that if they can crack it that RIM can just bump up the security a notch or so and MI5 will be back to square one.

    Maybe their best option is to heavily promote the iPhone and Android devices and hasten RIMs exit from the mobile business.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    boomchuck1
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @boomchuck1 H-m-m-m. That would mean goodbye, secure mobile. Neither iPhone nor Android have the security-built-in architecture of Blackberry.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    mejohnsn
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    "...BlackBerrys pose a serious problem for governments and law enforcement when found to be used for illegal or criminal activity..." --BlackBerry also provide a serious problem for governments who would impose despotism on the rest of us, but as usual, too many seem willing to stand for what's being positioned as merely a "law enforcement" or "security" issue, without demanding safeguards to protect our freedom and liberty from abuse by MI5, GCHQ, NSA, CIA, FBI and the government. Wake up!
    Wake up, people!
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DJJazzyJeff
    18th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @DJJazzyJeff Bingo.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    JRonin
    19th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    @DJJazzyJeff ...Finally some sense!!!
    ZDNet Gravatar
    striker67
    24th Aug
  • RE: British spooks called in to crack BlackBerry encryption
    There is only one unbreakable cipher. It's a random additive key. Plain + Key = Cipher_Text. If you *NEVER* reuse that key the cipher is unbreakable. Generating
    and distributing the key is a significant problem. If you really must keep your text secret, that's how you do it. The Washington-Moscow Hotline uses such an encryption scheme. Most organizations, governmental or non-governmental, simply
    don't have the resources to achieve this level of security. Most organizations really
    don't need such a level of security and most can't afford it. See a book "The Code Breakers" by David Kahn for a fascinating tutorial on cryptology.

    I suspect that any encryption scheme that's affordable by ordinary mortals is breakable.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    draco vulgaris
    12th Dec

Talkback - Tell Us What You Think

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

Blog Roll

Blog Archive

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources