Canadian Police Hacked BBM Messages to Shut Down Organized Crime Mobs

Canadian police intercepted BBM messages to basically shut down two crime mobs.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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BlackBerry's chief selling point is its security and self-avowed high-level encryption, but those claims are being questioned following news that Canadian police intercepted BBM messages in a case that ended in 33 arrests. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police accessed BBM communications to essentially take down two organized crime mobs in Quebec.

“Through the interception of electronic communications on BlackBerry devices (Pin to Pin messaging), the investigators were able to identify the suspects in relation to a series of violent crimes committed on the Montréal territory between 2010 and 2012: arson, weapon cache, forcible confinement, drug trafficking, gangsterism and conspiracy. Over one million private messages were intercepted and analysed as evidence using the PIN to PIN interception technique. This was the first time that this technique was used on such a large scale in a major investigation in North America," the RCMP explained in a statement.

But, according to unnamed experts cited by the Globe and Mail, “the Mounties could not have directly cracked the codes belonging to BlackBerry, a company that is often still touted as the maker of the world’s most secure commercial smartphones. Instead, it’s likely that authorities got a judicial order compelling the Waterloo, Ont., company to help decode communications.”

True.

[via BetaBeat]

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