Blackjacking

Chapter 3. Exploiting BlackBerry Devices

With a tremendous amount of existing market share, support across varied service providers, robust functionality, and the “coolness” factor, BlackBerrys truly are everywhere.

Once the toys of executives, more and more of these devices have worked their way into mainstream corporate America. They've even made their way into use by everyday end users. Many people feel that BlackBerrys are inherently secure. Until quite recently, there haven't been any major BlackBerry security vulnerabilities discussed in the press, unlike the many laptop vulnerabilities that are discussed on at least a monthly basis, mainly due to the supporting operating system.

This inherent sense of security is misplaced. It is true that BlackBerrys are not overtly insecure and that they don't have nearly the public vulnerabilities of laptop computers. That is a good thing. Notwithstanding, and as was touched upon in earlier sections, if it's a computer (which a BlackBerry definitely is), it can and will be exploited. To think that no one is trying to write exploits and take advantage of all those BlackBerrys out there being used by corporations around the world would be a significant mistake.

This chapter covers the gamut of threats to BlackBerrys and discusses specific exploits and vulnerabilities, including threats related to the following:

• Malware

• Direct attacks

• Intercepting BlackBerry communication

• Spoofing and intercepting authentication

• Physically compromising the BlackBerry ...