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Security Handhelds IT Hardware

Cracking the BlackBerry with a $100 Key 94

Posted by Zonk from the reach-out-and-worming-someone dept.
Hit Reply writes "Eweek is running the contents of a Symantec white paper that details how easy it is for a hacker to manipulate BlackBerry applications. Using a developer key that can be purchased by anyone for $100, an attacker can launch e-mail worms, SMS interception and backdoor attacks, and compromise the integrity of contacts, events and to-do items. The white paper has been yanked from Symantec's Web site." From the article: "Signed applications can send e-mail and read incoming e-mail. A malicious application could be used to allow third parties to send messages from the infected BlackBerry and also read all received messages. A malicious application could also use e-mail as a command and control channel to receive instructions to send and receive e-mails; send and receive SMS messages; add, delete and modify contacts and PIM data; read dialed phone numbers; initiate phone calls; and open TCP/IP connections."
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Cracking the BlackBerry with a $100 Key More

Cracking the BlackBerry with a $100 Key

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  • Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <(Satanicpuppy) (at) (gmail.com)> on Thursday November 30, 2006 @06:20PM (#17058098) Journal
    I see Symantec is still sensitive to the charge that they create worms, etc, to drum up business for themselves.

    Personally it doesn't bother me in the least that a security company is interested in, well, security. Having them actually detail vulnerabilities and produce papers like this would at least be a useful function for them.

    Of course, so would producing a worthwhile product that doesn't devour processor cycles, hog system resources, and create system instability upon removal.
    • One thing that seems funny in all of this to me, someone that is going to crack your blackberry is going to legally buy the developer key? Have to see what turns up on astalavista....
      • "One thing that seems funny in all of this to me, someone that is going to crack your blackberry is going to legally buy the developer key? "

        Well, the article mentions that you could do this by getting an anonymous pre-paid credit card. Does anyone have further information on this? That sounds interesting....

        I googled for a couple, but, most seemed to be overseas 'banks' that have you send $250 or $1K or more to them, and they send you a working 'number'. I'm just a little hesitant to try something like

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "One thing that seems funny in all of this to me, someone that is going to crack your blackberry is going to legally buy the developer key? "

          Well, the article mentions that you could do this by getting an anonymous pre-paid credit card. Does anyone have further information on this? That sounds interesting....

          I googled for a couple, but, most seemed to be overseas 'banks' that have you send $250 or $1K or more to them, and they send you a working 'number'. I'm just a little hesitant to try something like that I'd not heard of before.

          Anyone have experience with things like that?

          Search for [CC Brand] Gift Card. For example, Amex Gift Cards ( http://www10.americanexpress.com/sif/cda/page/0,16 41,16130,00.asp [americanexpress.com] )

          You can even pick them up at many stores

      • Re:Heh. (Score:5, Informative)

        by gclef ( 96311 ) on Thursday November 30, 2006 @08:21PM (#17059592)
        I'm more amused by the fact that Symantec seems to think that repeating 4-month-old DefCon presentations [defcon.org] and claiming them as thier own is somehow "newsworthy" or "dangerous."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shri ( 17709 )
      I can almost picture a Dr Evil Pointy Hair Boss in charge of developer keys, reading this and going .. "It will now cost 1 million dollars". Helps if you picture him as a Mike Myers look alike.
    • I was wondering. Can you still use the blackberry as a phone after installing a symantec product on it?

  • So what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jason Pollock ( 45537 ) on Thursday November 30, 2006 @06:23PM (#17058140) Homepage
    So you can get a signature really cheap. The device owner still has to install the application on their Blackberry.
    • Just send them an attachment named pornviewer.exe.
    • And to do that you would have to plug it in via USB (not Bluetooth) to a PC.

  • repeat 5x: (Score:5, Funny)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquare.gmail@com> on Thursday November 30, 2006 @06:26PM (#17058170) Homepage Journal
    how many crackberries could a cracker crack if a cracker could crack crackberries?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by k3vlar ( 979024 )
      a cracker could crack no amount of crackberries since a cracker can't crack crackberries. at least, not yet.

  • Wow major FUD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by electrosoccertux ( 874415 ) on Thursday November 30, 2006 @06:29PM (#17058214)
    I can send malicious emails and execute malicious programs in my friend's Linux box with a free "developer key". Just type "su" in the terminal and then enter this "developer key" (absolutely free) and its all yours.

    I should mention that yes, indeed, these situations are almost identical. A root password *can* be changed, to whatever you want, even without knowledge of what previous password was, quite easily.
    • Except my root password isn't available for $100 on the RIM website.
  • It sounds like it could be possible stalker fodder, but I don't know how many people would find the information a Crackberry stores/sends/receives to be highly valuable. Sure, they could be malicious and run up someone's text messaging bill, but there are a lot funnier ways to piss people off, such as by putting gum on the scroller wheel.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Right... because Blackberry's target audience consists of high school kids. It's quite fortunate that Blackberry doesn't sell their products to, say, corporate executives or independent businessmen or security officers or financial analysts or government officials.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ferzerp ( 83619 )
      You do realize that the reason one would use of a BlackBerry is to be hooked in to a corporate LAN yes? A BlackBerry not on a BES basically castrating the whole device.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by blincoln ( 592401 )
        I guess this is as good a place as any to ask - how did RIM ever sell the idea of having all corporate email and web traffic for Blackberries routed through their servers? I mean, it's overhead for most corporations to have the data routed to and from Canada, but it also gives RIM the ability to read all that confidential information - as if they themselves are the exact type of vulnerability this white paper discusses.

        I realize that they did it most likely to keep customers locked into paying for service,
        • Oh yeah, I was also going to mention - the BES depends on the ability of its service account to masquerade as users, rather than having them enter their Windows credential on the handheld and passing it through on a per-user basis. So the BES domain service account tends to have excessive access to the network. Is there a good reason for that design that I'm missing?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Ferzerp ( 83619 )
            Actually, the BES account needs Send As and Read/Write access to the mailboxes on Exchange. While it does have extensive access to the mailboxes, it needs no access to anything else. If you access secure internal websites, you must provide your domain credentials. If you use it for rdp, you must log in, etc.

            Properly configured, that account gives you access to every mailbox on the system, but nothing else. No worse than a mail admin account, and generally with a lot stronger password.
            • Properly configured, that account gives you access to every mailbox on the system, but nothing else. No worse than a mail admin account, and generally with a lot stronger password.

              Right, but what I'm getting at is that most admins don't generally set up hundreds of remote devices to do things in the context of their mail admin account.

              Because of the BES architecture, isn't a compromised handheld connected to a server running the default configuration a gateway for an attacker to read the email of everyone i

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Ferzerp ( 83619 )
                The handheld itself has no access. The email it receives is doled out by the BES. a compromised BES account yes. a compromised handheld? No.

                A compromised handheld WILL give lan access and email access to the user of that handheld until the device is disconnected from the BES. But the device itself has no permissions.

                Since there are no offline password attacks (yet) and you only get 10 tries before a BBerry disconnects itself from its BES, compromising a BBerry always comes down to a bad password/no pas

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ferzerp ( 83619 )
          Only if they can crack 256-bit AES encryption.
        • I don't think you have the idea right (or maybe I'm mistaken). From what I understand a BES server runs like an Exchange server, where you purchase the program and then the required licenses to run the units off of that program from your server.

          Besides, I couldn't imagine everybody's blackberry e-mails passing through Canada, that'd be the number one contribution to global warming!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ferzerp ( 83619 )
            it's true.

            all non-wap blackberry data travels along the blackberry-cell provider-RIM-BES-wherever (and the reverse for data sent to a blackberry)
          • The blackberry WAP Push service for quick email relies on your BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) being connected to exchange, catching your email, forwarding it to their servers, which then alert your device. All mail on blackberries travels outside your corporation

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by aonaran ( 15651 )
            How do you think it gets from the BES server in your corporate LAN onto the cell network?
            Your BES doesn't have a cell network router attached to it does it? Did you put up your own cell phone towers?
            Probably not.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Nimloth ( 704789 )
          If you understand the concept of end-to-end encryption, you'll realize that data is encrypted from device to device. The Blackberry Enterprise Server has the encryption key, the RIM servers don't.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 )

          I guess this is as good a place as any to ask - how did RIM ever sell the idea of having all corporate email and web traffic for Blackberries routed through their servers?

          The alternative would be to work the way that MS Mobile 5 does and have the device in the field connect directly into the Exchange Server (or whatever) via an access mechanism that you maintain. That means that you have to do the work to "keep the bad guys out" rather than RIM. Which one is "better" will depend on your point of view, and what you want to use mobile devices for. Personally, the RIM model makes a lot of sense to me, as you're already trusting your data to "someone else's network" (the wire

          • Personally, the RIM model makes a lot of sense to me, as you're already trusting your data to "someone else's network" (the wireless carrier). It's a lot easier to implement a connection (always initiated outbound) from your company to RIM than it is to support 1000s of remote devices in the field connecting in to you.

            Fair enough. My employer already maintains a server on the perimeter for Outlook Web Access, so your argument doesn't apply to us, but absent that I would be more likely to agree with you.

            Also

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Van Cutter Romney ( 973766 ) <sriram.venkataramani@noSpAm.geemail.com> on Thursday November 30, 2006 @06:36PM (#17058320)
    In other news, NTP just sued Blackberry, citing that the vulnerability was actually patented by them.
  • This one again involves someone willfully installing this hypothetical software...

    Just like the last attempt I saw to create a 3rd party BlackBerry security market by saying hey you can write a proxy to use a blackberry as a bridge to a company LAN via MDS... Of course you can (if i install your software)... Now if you can install this software without me letting you, then I'll worry... Until then, it's just FUD to create a market for a 3rd party security product.

  • Amazing! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by cybereal ( 621599 )
    It's amazing! An application installed to your phone can do things!

    Why is this even posted like it's some kind of new concept?

    If you install an application to your desktop machine, it can do all of those things. Why do you think the phone is any different? If you don't like the idea of malicious software then don't use a smartphone of any variety.

    In fact, this should be good news. A person has to go to the extra length of signing their application before it has this access. Of course, on my smartphone

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TheGreek ( 2403 )
      Is this not the case with the blackberry?
      Not only is this the case with BlackBerry, but in many corporate BES deployments, you can't install third-party software even if you want to.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ferzerp ( 83619 )
        I laugh every time I have to make a new BlackBerry policy... There are tons of policy items... but a large portion of them don't even apply. There are policy items to enforce a certain SSID (no, blackberries don't even have wifi), etc.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Thursday November 30, 2006 @06:47PM (#17058466)
    This is a pretty stupid white paper. The whole point of the key is that you can easily tell which key is being used by the offending applications, and then revoke that key. And it costs the attacker $100 per attack. It's a good system which balances the needs of the network, the users, and developers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      if a malicious app sends $1 premium text mesage from 100 devices that fee is paid up, every device after that is pure profit
      • good luck collecting that cash from your gateway provider.

        I guess you could run it through some kind of third party provider like clickatel or some such, but once you got to any level of worthwhile volume (Remember, the carriers take 50% right off the top of that $1, and most only pay out quarterly) you would never be able to collect.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
          most people don't pay much attention to their phone bills, and even if they do they will call and complain very rarely over a single doller added to a large bill.

  • That's nothing! (Score:3, Funny)

    by raehl ( 609729 ) <raehl311@NoSpam.yahoo.com> on Thursday November 30, 2006 @07:19PM (#17058890) Homepage
    I can crack a blackberry with a $4 hammer!

    I can do it for free with my fist, but that kinda hurts.

  • Duh (Score:2)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 )
    So you buy a dev tool and can make bad things with it afterwards.. Who would have thought.

  • Nobody's that stupid... (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheGrinningFool ( 1014867 ) on Thursday November 30, 2006 @07:35PM (#17059098) Homepage
    ... I mean come on, nobody's stupid enough to install random software on their machine without knowing what it does. Oh, wait...

  • No way! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <spencr04NO@SPAMhighpoint.edu> on Thursday November 30, 2006 @08:05PM (#17059428)
    So if you execute code on a computer, it does what you tell it to do? Better watch out!

  • Stock Tip: Symantec downgraded to Strong Sell (Score:3, Insightful)

    by astrosmash ( 3561 ) on Thursday November 30, 2006 @08:38PM (#17059748) Journal
    First they come up with the hypothetical Mac "virus" [symantec.com] that can hypothetically execute code if you manually download it and run it. And now it's the hypothetical BlackBerry malware that will hypothetically execute code if you manually download it and run it.

    What an absolutely pathetic attempt at marketing from the once grand antivirus company.
    • We routinely get security warnings from our security team about horrible flaws on our Unix systems that Symmantec has flagged. Usually they're along the lines of,

      "You're running Solaris 8. The default install of the first release of Solaris 8 had an obscure FTP bug and so YOU'RE GOING TO GET HACKED!!!!" This bulletin applies to every release of Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7, 7, 8, 8.1, 9.0, 10; HP-UX... Linux...AIX...NCFTPD...WU-FTPD..." and so forth.

      Usually it's a single bug in a single version that we've alread
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'm just a beginner bb developer, but I think it's even HARDER than is sounds to write Blackberry worm.

    Even if you DO write a program that reads/sends email or connects to the internet.
    And then pay the money and SIGN your malicious app--
    and then somehow get somebody to INSTALL it..

    Well on the BB releases I use - you will also get WARNINGS when you execute the program.
    When the program first tries to access your email folder - it will pop up a warning asking you "do you want to allow this program to acesss your email folder?"

    First time the application tries to open a TCP/IP connection to the outside world - same thing: "The application is attempting to open a conneciton to X.X.X.X - do you wish to allow it?". You can type "Allow" or "Deny" or "Allow always".

    So BE WARNED: A person can a malicous program, that is signed with his name on it (RIM takes your info before they give you the keys), which you MIGHT install and then you MIGHT accidentally give it access to your emails, and address book, and access to internet. If all those things happen - then it would be bad!
  • I can just see a future where your phone's processor is so bogged down by an Anti Virus "security suite" that it isn't responsive enough to answer a call in time.
    • You can already get antiviruses for palms, but that's old news. And yes, it's overkill, especially since data is synchronized anyways.
  • Ummm anyone who cares, google BBproxy and Blackhat/Defcon. There were multiple demonstations of this, and more. This is not just FUD, it is an important potential security hole, into many top enterprise companies.

  • It sounds like Blackberry are using developer keys as a tax on development for their platform. Developer keys should not work on any device, you should have to configure your device to accept them, either configuring it as a "development device", or better, configuring it to accept a specific developer key. In the latter case, the device manufacturer, network operator, or whoever controls the production keys, can get out of the way, and let developers create their own self-signed keys for development. Unfor

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by daveoj ( 319762 )
      You don't need a key to develop/run the application on the simulator(s)... so the development cycle is still essentially free. Only when running on a physical device, do you need to sign the code to allow it to call the various controlled APIs.
  • "The white paper has been yanked from Symantec's Web site"

    Blackberry security overview [virginia.edu]

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