14 DAY TRIAL // BlackBerry provides its customers with the safest methods of communication thanks to the encryption its servers provide.
Sadly, that's one of the reasons the criminal organizations are using BlackBerry devices to carry out attacks since their communication can't be traced and / or decrypted.
The good news is that doesn't seem to apply to the Dutch police, who says they are now able to decrypt BlackBerry data, including messages and emails.
According to a new report from Dutch blog misdaadnieuws (Crime News), which published documents sourced from the NFI (Netherlands Forensic Institute) in December last year, deleted messages can be recovered, and encrypted emails read on BlackBerry devices.
Also, Tuscha Essed, a press officer from the NFI (Netherlands Forensic Institute), told Motherboard in an email that “we are capable of obtaining encrypted data from BlackBerry PGP devices.”
However, NFI did not explain the method it uses to decrypt data sent through BlackBerry devices, so very little information is available on the technique it employs except for the fact that they need physical access to the actual BlackBerry device.
When asked how the Dutch police can decrypt BlackBerry data, Essed stated that “by answering these we would provide criminals with exactly the information they would need in order to eventually get around our research method.
“We would like to prevent that and therefore have been very reserved with our explanation towards the press.”
The decrypting solution could involve brute force via chip-off
Crime News also reports that out of 325 encrypted emails recovered from a BlackBerry device, about 279 were decrypted.
The device in question, a BlackBerry 9720 released in August 2013, is said to be one of the smartphones offering the safest method of communications.
One way of cracking BlackBerry devices could be brute force via chip-off. The method involves removing a memory chip from the circuit board and making a dump of the data it contains.
However, some devices might be unaffected by chip-off if they are paired with BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).
There's a slight chance that NFI is using another way to brute force BlackBerry devices without a chip-off, which is why they have been successful in decrypting so many messages and emails from a BlackBerry smartphone.