BlackBerry Will Continue Operations In Pakistan (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader writes: At the end of November, BlackBerry announced it would pull its operations out of Pakistan after the country's government demanded access to BlackBerry's user data. The Pakistan government has now dropped that request, and BlackBerry will continue operating there as a result. In a statement, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard said, "We are grateful to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and the Pakistani government for accepting BlackBerry's position that we cannot provide the content of our customers' BES traffic, nor will we provide access to our BES servers."

Comments

Interesting

[93 Escort Wagon]

So they won't give to Pakistan what they gave to India, eh? It'd be curious to see where they decided to draw that line, in terms of dollars earned per country.

Re:Interesting

[Dahamma]

Very old article, not even true, and refuted by Blackberry.

http://in.reuters.com/article/...

"RIM is providing an appropriate lawful access solution that enables India's telecom operators to be legally compliant with respect to their BlackBerry consumer traffic, to the same degree as other smartphone providers in India, but this does not extend to secure BlackBerry enterprise communications"

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

In the interest of accuracy ...

Your link is 5 years old. A more recent link (2013) indicates that Blackberry have allowed access to BBM and BIS, but NOT BES enterprise.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/blackberry_gives_indian_spooks_access/

In short, India and Pakistan have been given exactly the same deal.

Re:Interesting

[Provocateur]

As in, Gentlemen, start your SPINengines

But if it's not spin, at least we know where smarter heads prevailed. Their leaders knew it was a slippery slope to begin with: we have access. Can the other player/terrorist/competing regime/other country gain that same access, with enough dollars or gold to throw at that server?

Re: Interesting

[guruevi]

They can't give physical access to the clients' BES servers but that doesn't mean they haven't given them a key to unlock intercepted encrypted traffic. If they are okay with giving access to their less paying patrons, why draw the line there?

Re:Interesting

[dissy]

So they won't give to Pakistan what they gave to India, eh?

According to the article you posted and this slashdot article, they did give to Pakistan what they gave to India - which was absolutely nothing.

Didn't you read either one of them?

Re: Interesting

[tlhIngan]

They can't give physical access to the clients' BES servers but that doesn't mean they haven't given them a key to unlock intercepted encrypted traffic. If they are okay with giving access to their less paying patrons, why draw the line there?

You have to realize how BlackBerries work.

First, when they're attached to a BES server, the BES server and Blackberry exchange keys. That key is used for all traffic - the BlackBerry itself encrypts traffic using the BES server key, forwards it to the Blackberry network which sends it to the customer's BES installation. BES then decrypts the package and figures out what it needs to do - work email, traffic destined for the internet, etc. All communications are end-to-end encrypted and the Blackberry network just sees data blobs it can't decrypt.

In a consumer mode, what happens is the Blackberry network exchanges keys with the blackberry. The blackberry sends encrypted payloads to the blackberry network, which then decrypts it and accesses the internet. At this point the traffic is decrypted.

A "local" blackberry network server like that in India just means the Indian users are routed to that server. If the blackberry is attached to BES, then the indian server forwards it onwards as an encrypted payload as that's all it can do. If it isn't, then it's handled locally and decrypted.

A blackberry without BES has decrypted network traffic like a regular smartphone - if you're accessing an IMAP server unencrypted, the blackberry will access it unencrypted.

Pakistan wanted ALL blackberry traffic to be available to it - including BES traffic (India just wanted unattached traffic). That is not in the architecture, which is why Blackberry was shutting down - the design of the network was such that BES traffic could not be decrypted because it was end-to-end. Unattached blackberries are also end-to-end encrypted, except one end is the server attached to the public internet.

Re: Interesting

[guruevi]

I understand how BES works, the issue is that it isn't entirely unfeasible that Blackberry (the entity) doesn't have a master key that could access the data-in-stream to each of it's BES servers. The BES servers are a closed environment, a black box really, we really don't know. What we do know is that by default Blackberry DOES have a global pin which is enabled by default AND that your mobile carrier (could) know your PIN as well.

The BlackBerry device scrambles PIN messages using the PIN encryption key. By default, each BlackBerry device uses a global PIN encryption key, which allows the BlackBerry device to decrypt every PIN message that the BlackBerry device receives. Your organisation can use a global PIN encryption key, a PIN encryption key that is specific to your organisation, or both.

And guess how a specific PIN encryption key gets sent out? Encrypted using the global PIN.

Good for them

[penguinoid]

I heard BlackBerry had been in quite a jam due to a thorny situation, their operations in Pakistan were about to become toast.

Re:NSA - Yes. India - Yes. Pakistan - No.

[penguinoid]

NSA -- probably already had the info
India -- probably wrote their code
Pakistan -- probably isn't really willing to piss off their citizens and lose a company

Re:Let the US see Pakistan's BES traffic

[Quasimodem]

You mean just because they are Muslim and own a Blackberry?

Who? Just kidding.

[wjcofkc]

A long time ago I worked for a carrier. One day someone from Blackberry corporate was there. He had a demo device of their yet to be released all touch screen smart phone. I really kind of liked it. No one said it to his face, but by then we already all knew that it was too late. Then again, I am sure he did too. This would have been a perfect time for Microsoft to buy them just for their technology. Its's too late now though, they are knee deep in the platform they are currently offering.

Re:Who? Just kidding.

[wjcofkc]

Well damn. I hate to reply to myself but this prompted me to take a look at what they are currently trying to do. I had no idea that they had gone Android. That is a crowded market but perhaps it will be enough. Time will tell.

Re: Who? Just kidding.

[guruevi]

Their selling point was always encryption but then they sold out their customers to the US government and later other governments as well and all trust in their platform was lost. That and the fact that their functionality is easily replicated by going full SSL and remotely revoked full device encryption (which the iPhone did early on).

Re: Who? Just kidding.

[tmjva]

Why even bother with such requests nowadays. It should just be easier to hack. Or is it smaller governments lack the budget? Or for a small fee they should get a data feed from NSA!

Now they'll just hack them instead

[kheldan]

I'm not sure if Pakistan can actually be trusted. Wouldn't be surprised if they just hack into Blackberrys' servers instead now.

Backdoored

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberrys stance on encryption is well known (this is from November THIS year). They say one thing to customers, and a different thing to Federal agencies:

http://fortune.com/2015/11/18/blackberry-government-surveillance/

"BlackBerry’s philosophy about encryption and law enforcement requests is to take a “balanced approach,” according to chief operating officer Marty Beard."

"Encryption is very important to protect governments, business and individuals from hacking. That’s why so many world leaders and CEOs rely on BlackBerry to protect their data. At the same time, no one wants to see terrorists and criminals taking advantage of encryption to evade detection. That’s why we have always strongly supported law enforcement around the world when they need our help. While we do not support so-called ‘back-doors,’ we and every other tech company bears a responsibility to do all we can to help governments protect their citizens."

They describe a backdoor and then deny its a backdoor, but its a backdoor.

And if its a backdoor at the level of Blackberry, then any country where Blackberry operates will demand the keys to that backdoor. China, US, UK.... all of them have extra judicial key grabbing powers.

Re:Backdoored

[Anonymous Coward]

"BES servers, of course they can decrypt it "

While others offer end to end encryption and cannot be made to decrypt it. End to end is secure, but Blackberry solution is data mined by NSA, GCHQ, Indian and now Pakistan intelligence.

Adding insults won't fix this, its a back-doored product, even if you don't like the word backdoor.

Alice talking to Bob, should not have a backdoor to Snooper Kareem.

Re:Blackberrys BES is one of their few selling poi

[RandomFactor]

Doesn't matter. People compared the heavily limited locked down enterprise blackberry devices with their personal unrestricted iDroids. What a shock, iDroids won by a mile, even while Blackberry was still ahead of them..

Security? Management? Not part of the end user world view.

Re:Let the US see Pakistan's BES traffic

[unixisc]

Easier way - just freeze relations w/ Pakistan, and stop accepting ANY Paki citizens. The ones who are not Muslim are not the ones who have access to any of the embassies or consulates - they'd just attempt to get refuge in India - which many have gotten