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News

Infosecurity Europe: President Obama's Blackberry revealed

28 April 2009

The guys on the Blackberry stand at the Infosecurity Europe show weren't willing to talk specifically about it, but it looks like the White House has taken delivery of a custom Blackberry smartphone for President Obama.

The top-secret Blackberry 8830 has been developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and uses AES-256 encryption across the White House's WiFi network, as well as via US 2G and 3G cellular networks.

The Blackberry allows the President to send texts and emails securely, as well as make secure phone calls - via the White House IP servers - using a multi-layered encryption protocol.

The SecureVoice software being used on the Presidential Blackberry was developed by Genesis Key, an encryption specialist in Washington.

The Blackberry 8830 will replace the President's existing twin mobile devices, a custom Blackberry plus an NSA-supplied secure mobile device from General Dynamics, known as the Sectera Edge, which plugs into the President's Blackberry.

As we said, the guys on the Blackberry stand weren't willing to discuss the Presidential Blackberries, but senior managers, who we shan't name for fear of NSA problems, took time out to explain that all Blackberry users can now enjoy encrypted email on their portables, thanks to the use of AES 256-bit encryption.

The encryption - which also includes elliptical curve cryptography - says the company, works between the Blackberry and the email servers of the cellular carrier the smartphone is set up for.

The bad news, Infosecurity notes, is that most companies then feed their emails into the public internet which is, of course, unencrypted.

But it goes without saying that President Obama's Blackberry custom 8830 doesn't use the public internet.

Unless the recipient use the Net for their email.

But that, of course, is another story.

http://www.blackberry.com

 

 

 


 

 

This article is featured in:
Application Security • Compliance and Policy • Encryption • Internet and Network Security • Wireless and Mobile Security

 

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