BlackBerry is known for the security it provides to its customers' communications, using encryption. To put it better, it was the first mobile device manufacturer to use end-to-end encryption for the security of its customers.
But a new report has revealed that the company has been providing a master key backdoor to law enforcement since 2010.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been in possession of a master key to decrypt BlackBerry devices since 2010, according to a new report by Vice.
The report shows that Canadian police used the master key to monitor and decrypt over 1 million messages sent on the supposedly secure BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service in a criminal investigation that lasted 2 years.
During the trial of a murder case in 2011, the RCMP revealed that they were able to successfully unlock and read approximately 1 million messages sent between BlackBerry devices using the “appropriate decryption key.”
How did the RCMP get the Master Key?
Neither the RCMP nor the prosecutor revealed how the police found the Master Decryption Key to be able to decrypt messages sent via the BlackBerry Internet Service.
However, the most logical answer (although it is a hypothesis) is that BlackBerry itself gave Canadian federal authorities the access they wanted.
But beyond that, the more important question is whether the RCMP still holds the key.
After the closure of “Project Clemenza,” an RCMP investigation into a mafia murder, BlackBerry changed the Master Key. However, it is believed that the RCMP still has the ability to decrypt BBM messages.
