World's Greatest Hacker Says Obama's BlackBerry Can Be Breached

World's Greatest Hacker Says Obama's BlackBerry Can Be Breached

www.foxnews.com

Despite warnings from his advisers, the president insisted on keeping his beloved PDA, which now has specially designed superencrypting security software.

"It's a long shot, but it's possible," Kevin Mitnick told FOXNews.com. "You'd probably need to be pretty sophisticated, but there's people out there who are."

(visit the link for the full news article)

I sincerely hope the "Obama people" take this very seriously. If Mitnick says that it is possible, even remotely, it CAN happen.

If you are not familiar with the man, look him up and read his story. He is probably one of our best technical minds when it comes to the way a "hacker" thinks. Our government ended up enlisting after (and I am sure during) his time of punishment which did not allow him to touch a computer for a number of years.

You have to remember there is a whole generation "coming to power" that grew up with this technology. The so called "script kiddies" are not so small anymore.



www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This isn't news. Everyone knows blutooth phones are easy as pie to hack.. come on man.. don't be so gullible.

Lets take a deep breath and put the words of this "hacker" into perspective...

news.cnet.com...

Yes this so called hacker and security expert had his own site compromised. The truth of Mitnick is that he is not a hacker, nor a cracker but in fact he is a social engineer. He cons people into doing all the work for him by playing on their psycological vunlerabilties more than the weaknesses of actual networks. If you want to get a dose of real security knowledge I would sooner suggest looking to Bruce Schneier

reply to post by Helig


Yes I am familar with Schneier... in fact he wrote an essay on Obama's blackberry in November www.schneier.com...

The funny thing in that whole article, he does not even mention "hacking" security. It is more of the paper trails that could be used.. and rhetoric on blogging and digital ephemera.

Originally posted by ThichHeaded
Everyone knows blutooth phones are easy as pie to hack..

but... President Obama's isn't your typical everyday run-of-the-mill "bluetooth phone".

While I'm sure the "script kiddies" at the NSA had their play with the device ... hence his being allowed to "keep" it in the first place. Mitnick's concerns would seem not only Valid but also and most likely the root of others "dreams" - hacking the Presidential Blackberry.



It would seem more a case of when as opposed to if, no matter if it's having taken place is made public or not.


 


[edit: to add]

Helig,
You make quite the valid comparison with regards the "difference" 'tween Mitnick and Schneier.

[edit on 13-2-2009 by 12m8keall2c]

Originally posted by Helig
Lets take a deep breath and put the words of this "hacker" into perspective...

news.cnet.com...

Yes this so called hacker and security expert had his own site compromised. The truth of Mitnick is that he is not a hacker, nor a cracker but in fact he is a social engineer. He cons people into doing all the work for him by playing on their psycological vunlerabilties more than the weaknesses of actual networks.

The greatest weakness known to any system is its users, that is a well established fact. Human error, gullability, weakness whatever you want to call it costs more than any technical exploit can. No amount of security programs, firewalls, anti-virus will ever overcome human stupidity. That's what makes Mitnick good at what he does (did?).

This is kind of silly. "Worlds greatest hacker" pft. A noob could make that statement. Simple fact is, if it talks on a network/communicates with other devices, you can compromise it.

I think the encryption software he has installed would make it impossible to hack it.
You might be able to hack it but you would find nothing but gobbledygook
It would be military class encryption.

Originally posted by BorgHoffen
I think the encryption software he has installed would make it impossible to hack it.
You might be able to hack it but you would find nothing but gobbledygook
It would be military class encryption.

Depends on what you hack. Sure the encrypted info is gobbledygook during transmission, but it has to be decrypted to be useful at all. So you hack the client.

Jay Beale released a great tool at ShmooCon called The Middler. This tool, after poisoning your arp cache to make the victim machine believe the Middler is the gateway, will then take the first non ssl request and hijack the response coming back to the browser. Once there, it loads code into the browser which starts key loggers sending ajax calls back to the middler so that all further encrypted traffic can be seen through passing the the decrypted HTML etc back to the Middler.

The more insidious implications of this tool, is that it puts the users browser into a Matrix of sorts, showing you emails in your inbox that don't actually exist, or hiding emails that do exist, making you think you sent email, when you really didn't, etc. They have plugins planned for gmail, linked in, iphone updates, etc.

As Mitnick said, Anything can be hacked, and you aim first at trusted relationships.

But also, any security engineer would say this, it's common knowledge.

Now as for 60 hackers in China.... It would really only take 1 or 2 hackers at a hacker Conference....

All depends on the methods and salts available. Based on the nature of this site though we probably shouldn't go into any detail on how it can be done, from TOS to it just being a bad idea in general.

reply to post by 12m8keall2c


Doubtful that the NSA would be able to do much.
Do you know what the internet group Anonymous has been able to do?
Those are a bunch of kids who don't need heavy amounts of funding to tear up a webserver and anything else electronically. Torrent programs are available to do just about anything you want them to these days.
Take a couple of classes in C+++ and a few other programming languages and you can take on the world. The Russians pretty much took over the Georgian government websites during the incursions there. Chinese hackers are known for breaching just about everything.

Wow, this Blackberry garbage has really been good for 3 parties in this situation.

--------------------

Obama : There was intense chatter surrounding his Blackberry, distracting people from real issues and making his transition easier by taking some of the heat off of him and his policies and getting the public to focus on something as frivolous as his BlackBerry.

RIM : Yay free publicity!!!

and now Mitnick: Yay, free publicity!!!

---------------------


Hey BorgHoffen, a hackers 2 favourite words are "Impossible" and "Encryption".

Peace

Anything can be hacked. That is, anything that is connected via cables or through a wireless network.... It really is that simple. The subject here should be, what is the degree of difficulty.

The only networks that are said to be "hacker proof" are high level government networks, such as the CIA's network. However, just because they claim it is hacker proof does not mean it is actually hacker proof. Just because, you can't think of a way around something.... Doesn't mean it can't be done... Anything is possible in the world of electronics.

Originally posted by sliceNodice
Anything can be hacked. That is, anything that is connected via cables or through a wireless network.... It really is that simple. The subject here should be, what is the degree of difficulty.

The only networks that are said to be "hacker proof" are high level government networks, such as the CIA's network. However, just because they claim it is hacker proof does not mean it is actually hacker proof. Just because, you can't think of a way around something.... Doesn't mean it can't be done... Anything is possible in the world of electronics.

Or in other words...

"There is no spoon."

HunkaHunka,

Yes. In the world of electronics there is no spoon.

As for the real world... not exactly. I'm afraid you took my statement a little too literally, however my wording is to blame for that.