Canadian Police obtained Master Key to Crack BlackBerry Messenger Encryption

THE HACKER NEWS

Friday, April 15, 2016 Swati Khandelwal

BlackBerry has long been known for its stance on mobile security, as it was the first mobile phone maker to provide end-to-end encryption. But a new report revealed that the company has provided a master backdoor to law enforcement in its secure devices since 2010.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have been in possession of a global decryption key for BlackBerry phones since 2010, according to a new report from Vice News published yesterday.

The report suggests that the Canadian police used the master key to intercept and decrypt over 1 Million messages sent using its own encrypted and allegedly secure BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service in a criminal investigation over the course of 2 years.

Single Encryption Key to Protect All Customers

The issue with Blackberry’s security mechanism is that the company uses a single global encryption key to protect all its regular customers, though the corporate BlackBerry phones use their own encryption keys generated by corporate servers.