Slashdot Mirror
UK PM's Aide Loses BlackBerry In Chinese Honeytrap
longacre writes "The Times of London is today reporting a January incident in which a top aide to Prime Minister Gordon Brown discovered his BlackBerry missing from his hotel room after spending the night with an attractive woman who approached him in a Shanghai disco. Seems this was a run-of-the-mill BlackBerry without any encryption, only a simple password lock. The greatest fear is that, even if the device did not contain any sensitive messages at the time, there was likely enough information on board for a hostile intelligence service to snake its way deep into Downing Street's email servers. The aide was 'informally reprimanded.'"
What leads anyone to think it was anymore than the guy lost in in a taxi, or if the girl did take it, she sold it on to a second hand phone dealer for a few dollars.
Because they do it all the time. Tell you what, precious, take a trip to Israel and tell people you work for Northrupp Grumman. You'll get a lot of attention.
Much more important to consider is if the guy used the phone while he was in Beijing, there is an excellent chance that every keystroke, including passwords, was captured en route.
Um...you do know that when you press a key on your phone it doesn't have to get transmitted somewhere and then come back to be displayed on your screen...right?