Secure Devices for Everyone

Lee Gomes, 02.12.09, 05:00 PM EST 
Forbes Magazine dated March 02, 2009

Once a message is properly scrambled, our sun would burn out before you could unscramble it.

Some perquisites of the American presidency–Air Force One, say–are available only to the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Many others, though, can be had by anyone, including a mobile phone that’s immune to snooping and spying.

President Obama is, like many of us, an e-mail addict, and press coverage of his new BlackBerry has tended to describe it as some sort of top-secret, supersecure device. In fact, owing to advances in both mathematics and computers, presidential-level security is now available on every desktop computer and can easily be added, for a price, to any mobile device as well.

…

<link>

 

How To Secure The BarackBerry

…

Phone identification and targeting

The first thing that needs to be done is to ensure anonymity. Today, there are two IDs in GSM/UMTS systems that can be exploited if somebody knows them and can get access to the core of the mobile network to find out the current location of the phone up to the level of the radio tower. These IDs are the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) on the SIM card and the International Mobile Equipment ID (IMEI) of the mobile phone itself. Also, knowledge of one of the two values can also be used by someone who has access to the core of the mobile mobile network to intercept non end-to-end encrypted voice calls and Internet traffic.

To ensure anonymity these IDs should be changed in regular intervals. If I were the secret service I would get a large number of IMSI’s of several network operators, get the SIM card vendor on board and devise a scheme to change the IMSI on the SIM card on a regular basis. Concerning the IMEI a changing random number would do. 

…

<link to site>

 

 

Obama’s new BlackBerry: The NSA’s secure PDA? | Politics and Law – CNET News

Obama’s new BlackBerry: The NSA’s secure PDA?

Posted by Declan McCullagh

President-elect Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry while riding on his campaign bus in Pennsylvania last March.

(Credit: Pete Souza/ Rapport Press )

Bill Clinton sent only two e-mail messages as president and has yet to pick up the habit. George W. Bush ceased using e-mail in January 2001 but has said he’s looking forward to e-mailing “my buddies” after leaving Washington, D.C.

Barack Obama, though, is a serious e-mail addict. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” he said in a recent interview with CNBC. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

One reason to curb presidential BlackBerrying is the possibility of eavesdropping by hackers and other digital snoops. While Research In Motion offers encryption, the U.S. government has stricter requirements for communications security.

“Without more details I would have to say that putting sensitive or classified information on a BlackBerry is a risky proposition,” said Greg Shipley, chief technology officer at Neohapsis, a governance, risk, and compliance consultancy.

via Obama’s new BlackBerry: The NSA’s secure PDA? | Politics and Law – CNET News.

 

Apple iPhone Vulnerabilities Disclosed

The first is a URL display flaw in the iPhone’s Mail that could allow an attacker to send a message containing a malicious URL that looks legitimate, says one security researcher.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
October 2, 2008 06:00 PM

After two and a half months of inaction from Apple, security researcher Aviv Raff on Thursday decided to release information about two iPhone vulnerabilities that he found and brought to the company’s attention in July.

…

<link to article>

Drawing the line between privacy and security in surveillance

…

Not a single day passes in Turkey these days without an official claiming that he or she is being watched or that his or her phone conversations are being monitored. Similar allegations came up during the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon, a criminal network whose members are accused of having tried to manipulate the country from behind the scenes through assassinations and provocations for their ultimate purpose of overthrowing the government. The prosecutors have found evidence leading them to believe that the gang had an intricate system using state-of-the art technology to monitor phone conversations and track individuals.

…

<link to article>

India May Crack Blackberry Encryption

By Marin Perez
InformationWeek
June 13, 2008 03:38 PM

An Indian government official said his country may use third-party tools to crack the encryption used by Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)’s BlackBerrys if the company doesn’t open up its network.”If they fail to come up with any satisfactory solution, we will invoke other options. We have been approached by other companies with solutions to decrypt the data passed over the BlackBerry network,” said Telecom Minister A Raja during a presentation to the country’s Department of Telecommunications.

…

<link to article>

Sonera Shifting Email Services to Avoid Swedish Spy Laws

Sonera is shifting email services from servers located in Sweden for about half a million Finnish customers, the vast majority of them private individuals. It hopes to have the move completed by 8 AM Monday morning.

The move has been prompted by the Swedish government’s proposed law which would allow the National Defence Radio Establishment to intercept all electronic communications passing the national border.

Once services are relocated to Finland, emails between Finnish clients will not cross the border with Sweden and not be subject to possible legal interception by the Swedish military.

…

Link to article

Govt may soon find BlackBerry solution

KOLKATA/NEW DELHI: The government may soon find a solution to the BlackBerry security issue. San Jose-based Cain Technologies and SS8 Networks will be demonstrating their interception equipment to the Department of Telecom (DoT) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) from Friday.

DoT sources said if the demonstrations are successful, the government will direct Canada’s RIM (the maker of BlackBerry smartphones) to install the interception solution on Indian mobile networks expeditiously.

…

Link to article

Cryptographers Debate Top Security Needs

…

But the panel also agreed that it will take a coordinated effort to address America’s security challenges and that technology alone isn’t enough. Martin Hellman, a Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford, said, for example, that if all e-mail was protected by encryption or other technology, it would be vastly more secure but probably won’t happen because “spy agencies wouldn’t like it.”

…

Link to article

India Wants to Eavesdrop on BlackBerrys

BlackBerry users, beware of the snoops. On Mar. 28, India’s Telecommunications Dept. told telecom carriers, Internet service providers, and officials at Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes BlackBerrys, that it wants to eavesdrop on transmissions from every BlackBerry phone in the country. To comply, RIM might have to route calls and e-mails through government computer servers based in India. The reason: Intelligence officials worry that terrorists using BlackBerrys might avoid detection.

Indian telecom authorities already intercept the signals between BlackBerrys and other companies’ cell phones but not those just between RIM’s phones. That’s because RIM’s encrypted signals pass through its servers in Canada, which the Indian government can’t touch. Telecom carriers have agreed to comply, but RIM officials, says a carrier, have asked for time to decide. RIM couldn’t be reached for comment.

…

One possible solution might be to have RIM and carriers use a proxy server where e-mails and data from BlackBerrys in India would be stored for six months. That’s how RIM has appeased officials in China and Singapore, analysts say. RIM has never explained those arrangements. “The Telecom Dept. might look at a more holistic approach to address the security concerns of encryption,” says Alok Shende, technology practice head at research firm DataMonitor in Hyderabad, in southern India.

…

Link to article

Technorati Tags: eavesdrop,encryption,espionage,mobile,phone tap,privacy,security,spy,surveillance,tap,wiretap,criptografia,escuchas telefonicas,espionaje,privacidad,seguridad