Blackjacking

Chapter 4. Hacking the Supporting BlackBerry Infrastructure

One of the attractive elements of using a BlackBerry is that it allows the remote user to stay in touch with email and scheduling back at the office. While this is obviously productive for the end user, it does raise clear security concerns. The previous chapter covered the threats to the BlackBerrys themselves, but it is important to recognize that the supporting infrastructure can also be threatened.

Good and Bad: A Conduit to Your LAN

For a remote device to connect back to corporate resources on the LAN, the LAN infrastructure must be modified. Holes need to be made in firewalls, servers need to be set up, and connectivity needs to be established from the servers to other servers. It can be easy to overlook security as these changes are being made to allow connectivity. This is a grave mistake.

This chapter covers threats to the infrastructure in great detail. It is important to understand the elements that compose the supporting BlackBerry infrastructure, so that will be covered as well, including a discussion of security‐related design considerations. As in the other chapters, a real‐world scenario is presented and analyzed. Of course, preventative measures are also discussed.

For those of you waiting to hear about BBProxy, I'll cover that, too.

Understanding the BlackBerry Infrastructure

If you're going to protect an infrastructure, it's a good idea to have a firm understanding of exactly what you're protecting. This includes ...