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Security Holes Found In RIM BlackBerry Service
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.'"
*watches the karma drop* btw I'm a RIM supporter
do.what.promptcmds
Um, you might want to check back more often, latest news is that the Patent Office has admitted it will probably invalidate all of the patents held by NTP that are at the heart of the BlackBerry patent dispute. This will clear the way for RIM to resume "business as usual".
Just junk food for thought...
Who in their right mind would store that info unencrypted? It must be pretty easy these days to get a rim job.
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.
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!!
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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.