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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 makes you think the UK/US is any different?
"Honeytrap"? Bullshit. 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.
I think if it was really a "vast Communist conspiracy" as the article implies, the agents would have copied the data from the phone and returned it later in the evening, leaving him none the wiser.
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.
a valid point I suppose, I'm not certain their not, but they're on my side(ish). Clearly a double standard, but I'm OK with that.
The level of espionage out of China is pretty ridiculous. I wonder how long this goes on before the trade advantage of dealing with them is over weighed by their rampant spying.
I don't know what country you are from, but I can almost be sure that your country is making the same efforts against other countries.
The fault has to lie with the government and not the aide.
This comes down to just bad security governance, even my blackberry is encrypted and our BES servers enforce security down to the handset so that you can't install any unauthorised applications.
These devices of course are prone to loss, and given the confidential information potentially held on these devices should be reason enough to enforce the appropriate security measures on the devices.
likely enough information on board for a hostile intelligence service to snake its way deep into Downing Street's email servers.
So, in addition to stupid aides that fall for Chinese spy-whores, the British government is incapable of changing the passwords on its mail servers?
Look up Echelon. You can't make an international phone call without the bastards snooping in on it. Our Lords and Masters have no understanding of what "privacy" means.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
"News" have long ago lost any purpose of informing, assume it ever has that in the beginning. Nowadays, "news" is just baits used to catch your attention to advertisers, who are the real customer of any "news" organization, be it newspaper, TV or web site.
Which headline do you think catches more attention (thus earn more profit)? "Some guy lost his Blackberry?" or "Chinese spys strikes again"?
Oliver.
More xenophobic rubbish from the /. crowd.
What will it take for you guys to realise that China is not your enemy?
Max.
Our Lords and Masters have no understanding of what "privacy" means.
Funny, they feel the same way about you. "Those silly citizens have no idea what the word 'privacy' means anymore. Like it's something that we can't snoop into."
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Not good at it, or not caring?
Our espionage agencies have to keep up the front of being the "good guy". We don't spy. We only have those spies to protect us from other spies, you know? Our secret agents are only good and shining examples, they don't steal information or conduct covert operations to kill someone, and if they do, we first of all make sure that whoever they want dead is so long slandered and labeled terrorist, communist or whatever the boogeyman of the day so people nod their heads and agree that this man is better dead.
China has no such problems. The people there know that they better not question the actions of their government. Oh, you mean international prestige? Ok, hate me. I'm the one building your crap for cheap, want to do business without me? Can your economy survive without me? So whether you hate me or not, you will continue to do business with me, do I care what you think of me?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Prostitutes do still phones and cash. WHat makes them think that it was an agent?
Certainly it would give them a selfrespect and a feeling of selfimportance.
But what really happened is that a hooker has got a blackberry stolen from a drunkard.
"Only a fool would think that an attractive chinese women in chinese disco is not going to go to bed the first night with a westerner.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Luckily, some of us do know what it means these days — privacy means two very large prime numbers.
Following the logic they shold be the agents of foreign intellegence services running amok stelaing notebooks and mobile phones with data in London. But it is absurd.
They are stolen by trivial criminals for profit.
Actually, that's not quite correct. During the cold war, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ran a massive signal intercepting operation against the USSR's satellites, and (presumably) against its cables also. Following the collapse of the USSR, rumors started circling about this operation being used against the businesses of other countries, and it was revealed (unofficially) that several high profile businesses were being aided by their respective governments in literally stealing plans from foreign businesses (the case that comes to mind was a German firm that developed a new jet engine, and "coincidentally" Boeing managed to develop a nearly identical jet engine in a fraction of the time). To be fair, other governments do this to (including the Germans), but the US/UK/Ca/Au/NZ is the most extensive, or was prior to China's operation.
Palm trees and 8
'are you saying that everything on a Blackberry's drive is encrypted and therefore unretrievable if the password is lost?'
Yes, it is.
Individuals might have a blackberry with no encryption, and a weak password.
Anyone - like this guy - with a corporate blackberry will have an encrypted device and compulsory (annoying to the user - useful in this case) constant password checking and strong(ish) password policy enforcement.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
"According to conspiracy theorists..." ...who have since been demonstrated to be correct. Echelon's massive capability has been widely, if quietly, known for some time.
I hate printers.
Like turning it off.
I think your delivery was too subtle. Slashdot's audience is so broadly distributed that the only universal humor left in brevity is a fart joke.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Not to mention...
The remote nuke option.
For me, once I report my pda lost, the boys in corp will send a command to wipe the contents of the phone and remove all settings. I believe this option also exists for blackberry.
As well initiate the self destruct code on the small thermonuclear charge.
As others stated, disabling its ability to receive said kill signal is not difficult. Past that, the other barriers to gaining the data on the device can probably be circumvented as well. 10 password fails wipes the device? They probably wont bother trying a single one on the device itself, if this is truly an organized attempt. Rather they would probably crack it open and copy the contents of its memory directly from the pins of the chips themselves, and then work from that copy. Remember, once physical access is obtained, you can bypass any software deterrences and most hardware ones as well.
Tm
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