Mitnick: Obama’s BlackBerry can be breached

by Steve Ragan - Feb 17 2009, 16:50

Recently, the security address at the Tech Herald was sent a link to a Fox News story claiming that President Obama's BlackBerry is the "new Holy Grail for hackers," using Kevin Mitnick himself as the main source of the hows and whys.

“Everyone's trying to crack into the presidential BlackBerry -- and a top hacker explains how to do it,” is the pitch line for the Fox News story. The how to do it comes from Kevin Mitnick, the Phracker who spent a good deal of time, unjustly mind you, behind bars for his Social Engineering work.

For his part, Mitnick really doesn’t explain anything. This is to be expected, for several reasons. Least of all is the fact that, if he knew how to do it, he certainly wouldn’t tell Fox News so it can print a how-to guide for script kiddies.

“It's a long shot, but it's possible,” Mitnick told Fox. “You'd probably need to be pretty sophisticated, but [there are] people out there who are.”

Mitnick went on to explain: “If I was the attacker, I would look to Obama's close circle of friends, family and associates and try to compromise their machines at home. The objective would be to get Obama's e-mail address on the BlackBerry.”

The White House has already said there is an extremely small circle of people, both friends and government contacts, who have the President's real e-mail address. You would need that information first, before even beginning to consider attempting anything like cracking the First BlackBerry.

“The question is, what intelligence would you get? He probably has a rule that nothing classified is discussed.” added Mitnick in the Fox article, saying that classified conversations are likely to be highly encrypted.

Yet, the biggest deterrent for anyone wanting to gain fame by hacking the First BlackBerry would be the U.S. Government. Rest assured that the person who attempts it, let alone pulls it off, would get a swift and bold visit from their local Feds.

Hacking the presidential BlackBerry wouldn’t be like hacking Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account. That was comical, and in some ways a serious lesson on Web site security mechanisms. This could trigger treason charges if the U.S. Attorney had the notion to beat guilty parties with a law book.

No device can ever be totally secure, that’s a given, but to assume that the President’s BlackBerry is as vulnerable as all others is a bit of a stretch. We have to accept there are more security implementations, both for his device and communications in general, which we will never know of.

This layer of security is what will keep the First BlackBerry out of the hands of glory seekers.

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