Thursday, August 12, 2010

A colourless berry

Blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, cranberry (not the zombie), cloudberry, boysenberry, huckleberry (no mark twain here..) … enough of the list. But the one which is making rounds across the globe is the Blackberry - not the berry of Waterloo, England but the berry of Waterloo, Canada. RIM (Research in Motion) the makers of the berry started, I should say in the golden year of the 20th century (some will appreciate this...) as a two way paging system for quickly sending and receiving mails over the corporate network. Initially, not many accepted so that's why it was even nick named 'crackberry', may be only cracks used then..no offense here.
So in 1999, the smart phone for the smart people evolved and now BB holds 21% share in the worldwide smart phone market. Thanks to their USP, engineering, technology, creativity what not...they became the most sort phone among business men throwing away the likes of Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and so on. BB eventually became the market leader for its robust encryption, compatibility with all bands, push mail service across the globe, remote erasing of data and a clear demarcation between corporate and private mail boxes.
Come 26/7 the world witnessed one of the most gruesome battle in par with Fahrenheit 9/11. The Mumbai attack brought about a series of wake up calls to the Indian government, who found the majority of the communication has happened using satellite phones and BB. So, what do we do..we pressurize RIM to give access to the mails sent using BES and BIS and in readable format. The simple question to RIM, when access is given to KGB (Russia) and MSS (China) why not for us. So, the list is on, countries like Lebanon, Algeria, UAE have asked RIM for the same.
BB works on their own privately held encryption mechanism where in any data which passes from your mailbox to RIM servers (only in Canada.. that's the main issue) and from there to your hand held device is completely encrypted and which is fool proof. They use the best hashing mechanism in the market. The catch here, BB claim that end user gets to decide and define their private key and BB does not have any control nor does it have a master key which can decrypt it. Its a well known fact that in the world of security nothing is impossible, time is the only constraint. CIA uses the same to espionage on any traffic between the servers and devices.
Whether RIM comes up with Storm, Torch or Light or for that matter anything they have to address this pressing problem which will eventually manifold. The list of countries who threaten to stop the service is small now but the list can grow unless RIM comes with a well defined solution.
I have my doubts though, say if BB is banned in India, is it the only way terrorist communicate.. How about using a common mail id where I save the mail in drafts for the other person to read.. only when I send a mail, encryption, stealth, man in the middle, government, everything comes...
Anyways we have to wait to see if the berry is going to lose its colour or not....

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