Blackberry malware doorway to corporate networks

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 09 August 2006 16:22

Business IT - Security

Corporate network administrators beware, the Blackberry handhelds being used by staff in the field could be open doors through which hackers can penetrate your network defences.

At the Defcon hackers conference last week, a specialist hacker showed how to open the door to corporate networks using a Blackberry infected with a Trojan horse let loose by running a malicious program on the handheld device. The infected Blackberry could in turn infect the corporate network through the email server.

However, the folks at Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) reckon it's not much of a problem because Blackberry users would have to be tricked into downloading the dodgy application because it could not be received in an email.

That said, there have indeed been instances where computer users have been tricked into downloading malware so why should the Blackberry be any different?

Of course, Blackberry devices can be configured so that can't run applications. Then again, so can all computers. That approach sort of defeats the purpose of having handheld computers in the first place.

RIM believes the problem could be lessened by keeping the Blackberry servers separate from the corporate email servers.