Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, is becoming a victim of its own success. In a string of countries in Asia and the Middle East, the company’s flagship smartphone faces crippling security regulations, as India, the United Arab Emirates, and others are demanding access to users’ encrypted corporate e-mails and instant messages.
The stated concern of the countries is that terrorist and militant groups could use BlackBerry’s security features to communicate discreetly.
India is delaying the ban on BlackBerry’s corporate message service for 60 days to review a recent proposal from Research In Motion (RIM); the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to ban BlackBerry services starting Oct. 11; and Saudi Arabia is delaying its BlackBerry ban until it completes a review of a recent agreement with RIM.
The BlackBerry is popular among business users for its powerful e-mail encryption, which keeps business secrets under wraps. RIM has been wary of agreeing to demands to open the information to government eyes—although the company has already folded to Russia and China.
In November 2007, RIM provided its encryption keys to Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems, which allowed access to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB’s less fearful epigone. In January 2008, RIM China announced that sales were going through, after a delay while making sure the phones were no threat to China’s communications networks, according to Forbes.
Forbes added, “There’s only one way to satisfy the Chinese government regarding ‘security threats’ and that’s to comply with Chinese law regarding supervision and monitoring.”
Similar security issues began emerging last year. In October 2009, news hit that BlackBerrys were susceptible to eavesdropping through an application called PhoneSnoop. The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) warned that the software “allows an attacker to call a user’s BlackBerry and listen to personal conversations.”
The technology behind PhoneSnoop was believed to originate from a software download targeting users on the UAE-based Etisalat network for months prior, according to U.K. information security publication Info Security.
Etisalat sent text messages to users saying the download was a required service upgrade. Unsure of what was behind the software download, BlackBerry users on the Etisalat network were reporting that the downloads were making their phone batteries drain faster—a product of the eavesdropping.
