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Security Holes Found In RIM BlackBerry Service

Posted by Zonk on Tue Jan 03, 2006 02:21 PM
from the rim-just-cannot-catch-a-break dept.
Security Wireless Networking Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found several security holes in Blackberry handheld devices and the servers that power them, according to a story at Washingtonpost.com. The research points out serious flaws in the BlackBerry server, which could be exploited by convincing Blackberry handheld users to click on an image file attachment. From the article: 'Lindner's slides from his presentation -- which he agreed not to release until RIM has fully fixed this problem -- show that the Blackberry server which manages all of the encryption keys needed to unscramble e-mail traffic to and from all Blackberry devices registered on the network stores them on a Microsoft SQL database server in plain, unencrypted text. Lindner found that by convincing a Blackberry user to click on a special image attachment, that handheld device could be made to pass on malicious code to the Blackberry server, which could then be taken over and used to intercept e-mails or as a staging point for other attacks within the network.'"
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  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by JonN (895435) * on Tuesday January 03 2006, @02:23PM (#14386218) Homepage
    That will teach them no good thiefs to use patented technology! Never know what you're gonna get

    *watches the karma drop* btw I'm a RIM supporter

  • I'm no SQL guru, but even I know how to avoid these kinds of attacks. Plus, storing information like that in plain text is just... dumb.

    • Re:How could they let this slip? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WebCrapper (667046) <justin.whichwaydoigo@com> on Tuesday January 03 2006, @02:45PM (#14386380) Homepage
      What gets me is they're using a natoriously insecure OS, with clear text values in the database... Thats just asking for more trouble than you can get in.

      • Re:How could they let this slip? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm not really sure when the change happened, but the SQL server upgrade happened at version 4.0...previously the enterprise server did not use SQL. This is probably the only reason it took so long to find the flaw.

        BTW version 4 is causing duplicate calendar and address book entries for lotus notes users (all 800 of our blackberries are showing this bug yah!). We are debating going back to 3.6 as 4.0 only added wireless synch for address and memo dbs for the user. Not that big of a deal to plug it into a
  • ...is that it took so long to find this. Blackberries are in such wide use around government agencies, I would have hoped they would have found something like this long ago. I always have to wonder about the idiot designers and coders who create bugs like this.
    • Blackberries are in such wide use around government agencies, I would have hoped they would have found something like this long ago.

      That should teach them to discriminate against the Irish! Had they had fairer hiring standards, they would have discovered the problem long ago!

  • I think that publishing an exploit where the user has to receive a corrupt tagged TIFF file is just making the problem into a bigger issue.
    The article says it only affects certain versions of the servers, and than only a certain, corrupt image file. THAN it only prevents you from getting other attachments.
    Not exactly a big deal in my book (of course we use palms anyway, haha)

    • READ! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by temojen (678985) on Tuesday January 03 2006, @02:39PM (#14386341) Journal
      It's a corrupt PNG (a common image file type), that may pass code to the server to be run there (as administrator), with complete access to the corporate network, including all the plain-text, non-passphrase-protected private keys of all blackberry users on the same corporate network.

      If true, this is a gaping hole, and a very big deal.

      • Re:READ! (Score:3, Informative)

        by garylian (870843)
        Yeah, my wife works for Mercedes, and they are telling ALL users to not open any email with any type of graphics attachment on it, not just the .tiff and .png stuff.

        It is a pretty darn huge security hole, and one that shouldn't impact the home user (at least not yet) in any major fashion.

        Then again, it is probably wishful thinking that Blackberry users are more technically knowledgeable than the average home user, and wouldn't open dumb emails from unsolicited sources.
      • No, it's a specially crafted TIFF attachment. If you read either the knowledge base article that is linked in the /. story or the US-CERT advisory (VU#570768) you can see that it's a TIFF attachment.

        Second, it will not allow remote code execution or to take over the server, it stops the attachment service (Again, from reading the US-CERT advisory). It is classed as a DoS attack...as in Denial of Service....as in stopping the ability to use that service. This is not a remote code execution CERT advisory.

        F

        • Re:READ! (Score:2, Informative)

          by ejhuff (734708)
          From TFA [washingtonpost.com]:

          Lindner said the real problem -- a vulnerability in the way Blackberry servers handle portable network graphics (PNG) images, was not disclosed by either RIM or the US-CERT advisory.

          From the top of the CERT advisory [cert.org]:

          By causing the service to render a specially crafted TIFF file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service.

          Should an exploit be developed, this arbitrary code would run inside the corporate firewall on a windows system, possibly with administrator priv

          • I do apologize, I did miss that part in the CERT about running arbitrary code.

            However, in the advisory they said to disable all images because someone could possibly rename a TIFF to use another file extension.

            And in TFA (as you put it) that is still paraphrasing Lindner. That article is the only place that mentions PNG files. Everything else only mentions TIFF files. It could be possible that the author misheard or mistakenly mentioned PNG's, and it could be that all PNG files will cause this but no one

  • Job at rim? (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Rippa (181699) on Tuesday January 03 2006, @02:47PM (#14386390)
    Who in their right mind would store that info unencrypted? It must be pretty easy these days to get a rim job.
  • Will I be able to flash between 1.5 and 2.0 as much as I want?

    Does Norton see this as Brick.Trojan?

    Oops, that was the OTHER MegaCorp's product... Sorry, carry on.

  • Black-and-blue-berry (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Billosaur (927319) * <wgrotherNO@SPAMoptonline.net> on Tuesday January 03 2006, @03:03PM (#14386523) Journal
    Lindner found that by convincing a Blackberry user to click on a special image attachment, that handheld device could be made to pass on malicious code to the Blackberry server...

    I would like to try and convince most people with a Blackberry to see if they could use it as a suppository, but I digress...

    From the Washington Post: RIM didn't mention anything about the flaw allowing attackers to download and execute programs on the targeted device, but I'm left wondering whether they escalated this because of just such a threat.

    I really don't think RIM is going to shout this from the rooftops. If the exploit is as bad as is disclosed, there's some serious trouble brewing that makes the brouhaha with NTP look like a cakewalk.

    From the Washington Post: Lindner said he started looking into Blackberry's proprietary communications protocols because the Blackberry server requires an unusual level of access inside of a corporate network: the server must be run inside a company's network firewall and on a Windows machine that is granted full and direct administrative access to the customer's internal e-mail server.

    And RIM thought this was a good idea because...? It's like building a 50-ft high wall around the castle, then creating a hole for an 8-lane superhighway to pass through. Imagine the enterprising and inventive hacker that can plant a zombie process on that machine. Talk about spam! Imagine if a Fortune 500 company starts getting nipped because their email servers are dumping spam on the unsuspecting public. Lawsuits for everyone!!

  • PATENT INFRINGEMENT! (Score:3, Funny)

    by SmurfButcher Bob (313810) on Tuesday January 03 2006, @03:07PM (#14386557) Journal
    Yep, sorry guys... this flaw is patented. Pay up!

    Heh, I wasn't actually going to post that, but I had a thought... if we patented the dumbest mistakes out there (buffer overflows, etc)... what company would want to prove "prior art" ?
  • How would someone exploit the password issues on a GroupWise or LotusNotes- based BES install? Maybe I should be glad that RIM hasn't actually managed to come up with a backend-independent version (say, something that speaks IMAP or POP3), which would result in more servers being vulnerable.

    Also- given some of the other flaws that I've discovered with BlackBerries (which is not to say that I'm not an addict), something like this is not wholly unexpected. I mean, they haven't yet managed to make the times

  • Sounds like SQL Injection? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WoTG (610710) on Tuesday January 03 2006, @03:24PM (#14386705) Homepage Journal
    With the scant details provided, it sounds almost like an SQL Injection vulnerability. It doesn't sound like a problem with SQL Server directly, or else it wouldn't be a RIM specific problem.

    Anyway, can't administrators just filter all image attachments out through their AV or other software for the time being?
    • It doesn't sound like a problem with SQL Server directly, or else it wouldn't be a RIM specific problem.

      Then why is it that in 99% of the cases, whenever SQL injection is involved, SQL server is too? Must be really bad luck on Microsoft's part, I guess :-)

      • Re:Sounds like SQL Injection? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cduffy (652) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Tuesday January 03 2006, @04:22PM (#14387220)
        SQL injection flaws are related to how well the application using the database is written, not the database itself. Any database-backed application can have SQL injection flaws, no matter what the underlying database, so long as the application is written by an idiot.

        Listen, kids: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER pass user-provided values into your SQL queries as strings. There's a reason every database access API in existance allows positional or named parameters to be passed outside the parser, and it's not just performance.

        And if I sound a little grumpy on this topic -- like maybe I'd recently worked with a developer lacking just this sort of clue... well, maybe you'd be interpreting my tone correctly.
        • Does PHP have a way to do placeholders? I always use them with Perl DBI, but never found a working solution for PHP in the brief time I looked at it.
        • Can we mod the parent up to 11, please?

          No matter what clever escaping you do, there is no excuse for building sql queries using user input to make a string. Bad, bad, bad idea. Bad for security, bad for encoding problems, bad for performance, bad for readability, bad for reusability, bad for baby jesus.

          Don't do it. Ever.

          -b
  • I had an article here about it, looking for anyone who has a blackberry to discuss:

    Blackberry handhelds/servers vulnerable to attack [fak3r.com]

    I had no idea the server backend was so...crummy. Why do geeks running FreeBSD at home have their passwords encrypted within MySQL, but big companies with million dollar products don't?
    • I had no idea the server backend was so...crummy. Why do geeks running FreeBSD at home have their passwords encrypted within MySQL, but big companies with million dollar products don't?

      The entire server backend is like that. Some of the more amusing examples:

      - When it starts, it has a fixed number of threads it can use to talk to the Exchange server. Let's say it's 1000. If a thread is killed off, e.g. because it timed out, it is not returned to the pool. So over the course of a week or so, you run out of t
      • Amazing, thanks for the info, again, I have friends that use Blackberrys for work and love them, but damnit I can't believe the backend is that crappy! Another company trying to pry more money via handicapped proprietary software. Wonder if there are any open source projects working on a version of the blackberry server?
        • Wonder if there are any open source projects working on a version of the blackberry server?

          I would think a better open source-type option would be to either use a handheld that has some kind of X Window client for mail on a remote server (if you want it in realtime), or a regular mail client that syncs up its local copy of the inbox every once in awhile.

          Honestly, there's no legitimate reason I can think of for the Blackberries to work the way they do, with mail passing through RIM between your mail server a

    • RIMjob (Score:4, Funny)

      by digitaldc (879047) * on Tuesday January 03 2006, @02:40PM (#14386350)
      when I know they are hiring newbs from U of W that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, this sort of thing is not a surprise to me!

      Apparently they don't know their ass from a hole in the security, either.
    • when I know they are hiring newbs from U of W that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, this sort of thing is not a surprise to me!

      Interesting because UofW has an amazing Computer Science program, is reknown for the quality of the co-op students that they send out, and is one of the largest sources for technology labour in Canada.

    • Exactly. No one should be able to get a job until they've had a job. That'll fix everything.

      • No one should be able to get a job until they've had a job. That'll fix everything.

        It's not hiring newbs at all that's the problem -- it's hiring too many of them, and expecting them to be actually useful without an extended training and mentoring period. There are a few who can do that -- but even then, mentoring and simple experience is absolutely essential.

        Bringing in a bit of new blood now and again is a good thing. Having a workforce devoid of practical experience is a recipe for disaster.

    • Re:RIM (Score:5, Interesting)

      by incast (121639) * on Tuesday January 03 2006, @02:52PM (#14386431)
      I used to work at RIM, and if you honestly think that it is mostly staffed by 23 year olds, you are mistaken. The vast majority of folks at RIM are not fresh out of undergrad and the technical genius that does exist there is indeed very impressive (I worked on the business side, not the tech side.. and the tech guys really know what they're doing). And further, if you honestly think that Lazaridis and Balsillie run the type of place where major design decisions are made by junior people, I'm not surprised that you don't have the qualifications to get a job there.

      The fact that they made a small design mistake isn't really that surprising. These things happen all the time. Their response is what's important going forward, and I (as a current BB user) have faith that they will quickly patch this up and move on.

      • Re:RIM (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Kasracer (865931)
        They obviously don't know what they're doing if ANYONE using a BlackBerry can use an SQL Injection Attack on their own server. This is extremely easy to check for. Just like buffer overflow attacks. There is no reason why either should exist except for either laziness or pure stupidity.

        They made two big mistakes with their design. This kind of thing should be surprising. If they're selling a product used in millions of businesses, it has to be secure. Storing important information in unencrypted text and
        • You make several good points. As I said, I'm not fully familiar with all of the advanced technical details of the system (I worked in Marketing). My guess is that this story is blown a wee bit out of proportion, or someone just got a bit sloppy on implementation or something along those lines. I would be genuniely surprised if someone seriously dropped the ball on this.. it just isn't how BlackBerry does business. (Although they do seem to be a bit more "push it out the door" than they may have been two

      • Re:RIM (Score:1, Insightful)

        by tabooli (927310)
        this is not a SMALL design mistake.. this is a HUGE GLARING ERROR. perhaps you thinking "they made a small design mistake" explains why you worked in the marketing department.

        If the vast majority of the tech side is "very impressive" then this mistake wouldn't have been made, the structure and design of these systems should have been done in a team environment, and someone with experience should have flagged this in the very beginning.

        there is, of course, a place for fresh grads, but it should be wo
        • See my reply to Kasracer re: "small mistake" and my slightly educated guess as to how it would happen. And I do agree that I should be on the business side, not the tech side.. if I was ever on the tech side, these sorts of stories would be a lot more common.

          I definitely agree with you re: place for new hires.. I don't think many people would disagree. What I was trying to say is that this is very much the way things are within RIM (e.g. teams working on specific projects with a range of experience and ba
      • It is interesting to have an inside view of things rather than to simply criticize anonymously on the web.
        It's unfounded subjective views like these that make reading slashdot feel like a waste of time.
      • The fact that they made a small design mistake isn't really that surprising.

        Using a Microsoft product on a server is a small design mistake?!?! You must be new here!

        • Hey.. at least my UID starts with a 1 :)

          Anyway.. I actually asked that question to folks in the tech side.. and their entire reasoning is that in 1999 (and arguably right now), the majority of their install base was running either Exchange or Notes as their email platform.. thus, in original design, they considered tight interoperability as critical to BB's success. That and MAPI allows pretty tight integration between Exchange and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. (With BES 4.0 they added groupwise to th

      • Re:RIM (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Tuesday January 03 2006, @04:18PM (#14387181)

        The fact that they made a small design mistake isn't really that surprising. These things happen all the time.

        I'm not sure you can write this off as a small design mistake. This seems to me more like a fundamental design flaw based on a series of bad choices. They want you to run a Windows based server, outside your firewall, running a number of services, with security data stored unencrypted, and full privileges to the corporate e-mail server. That sounds like someone's friend or nephew was running the server project and either would not listen to advice that things should be done right, rather than quickly, or simply was unable to hire competent personnel. This is why companies making products like these should have a security team outside each project's chain of command, and why that team should be listened to. Now, who will trust them to do the right thing next time. What security conscious company will consider them as a solution provider?

      • I'm a security consultant and a CISSP.

        That was not a small mistake. It was a series of mistakes, some of which fell short of best practice and some of which fell short of standard practice.

        In fact I'll use this case as an example to explain to clients why it's imperative not to store sensitive information in plaintext on an exposed server.
        • I'll agree with you there -- my experience with the entire TSupport program was that it wasn't very good. The fact is that they want you to pay to get elevated automatically... not necessarily a good customer service practice.

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