Tag Archives: Hack

This Hacker Just Proved Why You Should Stick With BlackBerry

oleg-pliss-hack

N4BB reported:-
Most BlackBerry users are BlackBerry users for the smartphones’ most notable feature: security. BlackBerry 10 and legacy BBOS is nearly impenetrable, as two of the most secure enterprise and consumer smartphone operating systems of choice.

Unfortunately, for your friends with an Apple iPhone or iPad, who live in Australia or New Zealand, they haven’t enjoyed such security. Just when they thought they could sleep easy at night, they were awaken to a seemingly bizarre message.

Many users awoke to an alarming sound with a message on the screen reading “Device hacked by Oleg Pliss” and a demand of between $50 and $100 to unlock it.

How did the hacker compromise these devices? The exploit uses the “Find My iPhone” feature, which allows users to remotely lock their iPhones and iPads via iCloud in case the devices are lost or stolen.

Apple hasn’t yet publicly commented yet on the major vulnerability. Some users have reported they could get around the hack if they had previously used a passcode and then restored via iTunes.

For those who didn’t use a passcode, they were in for a little harder recovery as the hacker had made a passcode for them. Though, it may be possible to enter the wrong code six times to disable the phone and then restore it using iTunes.

Apple has been taking a beating lately in terms of security. Recently it was revealed that email attachments were not encrypted in iOS 7+, despite it being a feature Apple repeatedly touted.

Nevertheless, this is just one of many instances where a competing platform has inadvertently helped give BlackBerry another leg to stand on.

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How secure is your Mobile devices?

How secure is your Mobile devices?

This question have been toss around for quite some time, depending on how your organization value its data, different company treat the seriousness of data used by employees differently. Organizations such as Banks, Insurance Healthcare and even governments will pay more attention to their data security and the type of devices that was being used by its employees.

This is a real story told by my friend, this happens to his ABC company, his ABC company is into logistics business and mobile devices are widely used especially with the BYOD trend, to his company they never though that they will be the victim of data theft and losses to their business and accounts. The ABC company uses Android based solutions and their employees and managers uses a famous free chat application that they use to create a group chat for employees.

For the past few months customers that have confirm with their services are cancelling at the last minute and shift to their competitors, this have been going on since Jun 2013. An investigation was launch and they found out that there are Malware and applications that was used to exploit the loop hole in the chat application and their Android devices. The competitor uses this to spy on their chat conversation and are able to know which customers they have contract with and perform a counter offer.

ABC company have since stop the free chat usage and insist their employee to install BBM and are now looking into getting BlackBerry BES 10 for their company. My friend contacted me on this and i have shown him my BlackBerry device which he tested it and found that it is suitable for his company needs. He told me the main thing they need now is a secure messaging system, GPS, email, and a secure workspace to separate their employee personal and work related apps.

So beware of what applications that you install in your mobile phones. For those Organization that feel that mobile security is not important think again, your employee could be an unknowing victim of a hacker or have install Malware in his device and your company could be losing  confidential information to hackers or your competitors.