Earlier this week the Netherlands Forensic Institute claimed that it had decrypted 275 emails from a BlackBerry phone out of the 325 emails that were found on the handset. NFI offers its services to the Dutch police which didn’t reveal the method used to crack the BlackBerry handset. BlackBerry is now defending itself against these claims while reiterating its commitment to privacy and security of its users.
Since the Dutch police aren’t revealing how they decrypted the BlackBerry handset there’s speculation about the methods they may have used, some believe the NFI used special hardware or software to decrypt the data, perhaps took apart the device itself and gained direct access to the memory chips.
Saying that it’s aware of recent reports that police-affiliated groups in the Netherlands were able to “crack” encryption protecting emails on its device, BlackBerry says that it doesn’t know which device the procedure was performed on and how that device was configured, managed or protected. It doesn’t have any details on the nature of communications that are said to have been decrypted.
It says that even if data was recovered from the device it may have happened due to factors “unrelated to how the BlackBerry device was designed,” pointing out that data might have been recovered through user consent, an insecure third-party app or deficient security behavior of the user.
The company reiterates that “there are no backdoors in any BlackBerry devices, and BlackBerry does not store and, therefore, cannot share BlackBerry device passwords with law enforcement or anyone else,” and that its devices are “as secure and private as they have always been.”
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