Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

CEO John Chen earlier said this about BlackBerry security (at http://crackberry.com/john-chen-discusses-blackberry-securit...):

> There have been a number of news articles over the past few months speculating that BlackBerry technology may have been deployed in a non-approved manner, placing sensitive government information at risk. While I cannot comment or speculate on those news stories, or the extent to which any vulnerable non-BlackBerry components may have been involved, I do want to reiterate the security technologies that BlackBerry provides to millions of government and enterprise customers around the world.

New BlackBerries are based on Android now. I'd venture that 95% of a new BlackBerry is made of non-BlackBerry components. I find it interesting that he carefully disclaims any vulnerabilities that might have been found and exploited in that 95%.

I don't have anything particularly against BlackBerry. I wish they'd get their act together and do well so we can have more competition and innovation in the cell phone market. However, I wish we'd put that whole "BlackBerry is secure" trope to rest because that doesn't ring remotely true to my ears.

Blackberry deserves props for experimentation and their surprising good OS 10, but if Priv is shorthand for privacy, then that's veering close to dishonesty.

Darn happy with my Passport though.

I give them their props. Again, even though I like iPhones, I want someone else to give them a run for their money so that Apple is more motivated to emulate the cool stuff so I can have it. But even today, their CEO goes on about privacy and security - as long as you use only the enterprise stuff and not the messaging that it ships with. And as long as all the other stuff on the phone isn't compromised, say by a root hack that allows attackers to dump RAM. And as long as they haven't deliberately handled the encryption key protecting your stuff over to third parties.

As long as all that's true, their stuff is secure. That's not confidence inspiring.

...if Priv is shorthand for privacy, then that's veering close to dishonesty.

I remember one experience very clearly from when the Priv first entered the market. I looked through the related web pages, curious about where Blackberry was going. I found plenty of marketing around tools that would notify you if various things went wrong in terms of privacy and security. However, I found literally nothing to state that the phone would actively prevent those things from going wrong or check with the user before performing actions they apparently considered significant enough to warn about. It was one of the most marketing-heavy, content-light, non-committal product sites I've seen in a long time.

Until today I don't think I've been there again. After reading the initial marketing, I just assumed the phone wasn't actually going to be significantly more secure or private than anyone else's or they'd have told us how it was instead of skirting around it repeatedly for the entire site. In fact, if memory serves, it was at the time based on a version of Android that predates some significant improvements in terms of app permissions and locking down what they can do, suggesting that contemporary models from competitors that used a later version of Android would actually have been much better than the Priv in at least some areas of security and privacy.

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