BlackBerry Phones Are Secure, Reassures Company After Dutch Police’s Email Decryption Report

A few days back, a shocking report said, Dutch Police were able to read the ultra-secure BlackBerry emails by decrypting them. The Canadian tech giant, on the other hand, has reassured its users via an official blog post saying our devices are "secure as they have always been.”

According to BlackBerry’s blog post, the company does not have any information on the device in focus, neither does it have any configuration related details. “BlackBerry does not have any details on the specific device or the way that it was configured, managed or otherwise protected, nor do we have details on the nature of the communications that are claimed to have been decrypted,” the post added.

BlackBerry also said, in case, the email recovery report was true, it could be because of a security-compromised device and not because of the design. The possibilities are endless. For instance, the decryption of emails would have happened with the user consent, or via an insecure third party application. It goes without saying that insufficient security from the user’s end would put any device under risk of hacking.

The tech giant has also assured that BlackBerry devices do not have backdoors and this makes it impossible to hack. To top it off, BlackBerry does not store data and hence, the device passwords can never be shared with law enforcement departments or any other party. If BlackBerry users follow the recommended safety/security practices, BlackBerry devices cannot be compromised with regard to security and privacy, the blog post assures.

Meanwhile, Phone Arena citing Motherboard, Crime News said a BlackBerry 9720 handset was apparently used to decrypt the emails. This handset utilizes PGP encryption and it was apparently purchased from a third-party vendor that sells PGP-enhanced (i.e. customized) BlackBerry handsets.

It’s also being rumored that, software from Cellebrite was used to decrypt the BlackBerry email. The other way is by removing the memory chip and retrieving the stored data.