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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.'"
Would he have reported the loss of his virginity?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
They aren't telling us that Scotland Yard did this deliberately just to see how the Chinese would react.
What the Chinese aren't telling us is they knew this was a trap and reacted accordingly.
What Scotland Yard also isn't telling us is that they knew the Chinese would see the trap and were counting on them to react accordingly.
What the Chinese also aren't telling us ....
oooh my head hurts.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What makes you think the UK/US is any different?
China is basically using Capitalism as their weapon by fixing the Yuen to the Dollar.
2005 just called, they want their now-outdated analysis back
You just got troll'd!
I promise not to carry anything sensitive, and I'll distract the attractive Chinese women for him so his secrets will remain safe!
"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.
The woman was not really attractive, he was just desperate.
Seriously, is the woman's attractiveness really pertinent to what happened, and was her attractiveness fact-checked? Or is "attractive Shanghai woman" a British idiom for "prostitute"?
My country doesn't have the budget, frankly. I'm Canadian.
Only a fool would think that an attractive chinese women in chinese disco is going to go to bed the first night with a westerner.
You've clearly never been to Asia. Rest assured you can see many examples of exactly this happening all over Asia.
Now send in 007 to get that Blackberry!
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?
Ew, if you could lose a blackberry in that
Chinese Honeypot, I wouldn't stick around.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
They know what the aide looks like.
ba-dump *tsssh*!
Xenu loves you!
Of course. Then the aide will be so busy playing with his blackberry that he won't notice the attractive woman. Of course if he did notice her he'd still be too shy to talk to her.
I like your plan; it's sound.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
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
His Blackberry got shanghaied in Shanghai?
"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.
Tsktsk.
He should get instructions on how to safely do Penetration Testing of the Chinese secret service. Clearly he forgot to secure the client side properly. Except for that, the article is a tad vague on whether the testing itself went smoothly and he found some holes.
*Ahem*
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
My country doesn't have the attractive women, frankly. I'm Canadian.
There, fixed that for you.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Members of the British Government will now be expecting an increased amount of spam and unsolicited phone salesmen calling to offer V1agra and other products.
Will that be because of the data inside the phone or because of the chinese lady's detailed report?
The Euro to Yuan is not fixed: according to the data linked by you it seems to have gone up from cca 9,3 to cca 10.7 - by about 15 percent.
Also the Dollar to Euro rate decreased by about 30 percent (and not 60).
Now, those are just rough calculations and IANASoros - so correct me if i'm wrong.
Sig. under reconstruction.
My guess was that the aide's name was Sebastian and after the recent bi-election there was call for a celebration! *clap hands* Champaign!
.
You've clearly never been to Asia. Rest assured you can see many examples of exactly this happening all over Asia
And so begins the great stampede of slashdot readers heading for asia.. ;)
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.
Luckily, some of us do know what it means these days — privacy means two very large prime numbers.
My country doesn't have the attractive women, frankly. I'm Canadian.
There, fixed that for you.
I just moved to downtown Toronto. I can assure you that you're wrong. Although perhaps we're stockpiling them.
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
(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).
Boeing doesn't develop jet engines, it never has - its an airframe manufacturer, every jet engined aircraft it has developed has used a third party engine. I can't for the life of me think what 'new jet engine' you could possibly be talking about either.
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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