[ArtForm]

I just had a thought and I wanted to ask some folks about it who would know. I was reading this article http://seekingalpha.com/article/3454006-the-blackberry-android-phone-can-sell-in-the-millions-if-its-priced-competitively and the writer was talking about the miracle it would be if Blackberry were able to secure stock android instead of using a forked version like Blackphone. Then it got me thinking, and I may be wrong: didn't all communication old Blackberrys (BBOS7 and prior) ALL go through BES prior to going out into the wild? Wasn't this why, for some time, a phone plan with a Blackberry was more expensive than any other: because the carrier had to pay for the specialized back-end management of BES on EVERY phone?

What if Blackberry went back to that? What it their androidsecured effort is a way to generally secure any android through BES12 or something like it, but will come free with Blackberry android devices, along with a guarantee that the hardware and individual productivity apps (all made by Blackberry) are deeply privacy and security conscious?

This would mean that Blackberry would not need to fork the OS, or use it in a "hypervisor" (Sorry Bla1ze). It would also be consistent with Blackberry's vision to secure ALL devices, and Blackberry devices would just be special because they came with these services by default.

I don't know the technical aspects of what Blackberry used to do, or if this model would even effectively secure the phone, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[conite]

All BBOS phones required BIS.

Those were the days of low volume, and low bandwidth Internet. The sheer quantity of data today would overwhelm any infrastructure BlackBerry could build - assuming they even had the funds to build and maintain it.

PassportSQW100-4/10.3.2.2339

[Troy Tiscareno]

BBOS phones through BBOS7 required BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service), but BIS had virtually nothing to do with security, and it definitely did not "secure all communications" or anything close. BIS was primarily a proxy service for Internet traffic, designed for the very slow 2G networks that existed during its design phase. It would use compression to reduce the size of web pages (it also would reduce the size of pictures) to help them get through the network faster - otherwise, on the 2G networks of the day, it might have taken 1 or even several minutes to load a complex webpage.

BIS also enabled access to BBM, and BBM is "more secure" than SMS texting as it isn't sent in plaintext and is thus immune to casual snooping, but it also isn't considered secure even by BB, who calls what it does "scrambling" instead of encryption, even though it's using encryption to do so. The encryption for BBM uses a universal key, though, and that means it's relatively easy to decode (your carrier can decode all of your BBM messages easily, for example).

Note that phone calls, SMS/MMS texts, and virtually all other forms of communication are either unencrypted or use the same encryption protocols as are used by any other phone.

BB's "security" is mostly a product of BES, which was designed around the needs of a large multinational company (aka "enterprise), and provides encryption for access to that company's internal email (and, where deployed, access to company file shares and/or custom corporate apps) as well as a unique-to-the-corporation encryption key for BES - which means that outsiders have a much harder time trying to decrypt your corporate BBM messages, but that your BES Admin can decrypt them and see everything (by design - the company owns and is legally responsible for its communications). BES also provides additional capabilities for device management, including application deployments and restrictions - which CAN include forcing your Internet connection to go through the corporate network and thus be subject to inspection and documentation by the company. Note that even here, phone calls and SMS/MMS texts are no more secure than on any other phone.

BES still exists today and still provides those important functions that enterprises need, but BIS was't carried forward with BB10 because cellular data networks are largely 3G or better in most of the world today, and will only continue to improve, and not only can BIS not handle the volume of traffic today, but nearly everything that's compressible on the modern web is already compressed, so it would do little good, and the time it spent processing would only SLOW a modern connection. BIS's time has come and gone, just as similar proxy services that compressed Internet connections for dial-up modems have gone - they simply aren't relevant today.

[kwenie]

I suggest you read this thread about secured android:
http://forums.crackberry.com/showthread.php?t=1034849



Posted via CB10

[sammyg423]

So who now manages BIS?

[conite]

So who now manages BIS?

BlackBerry still operates it for the few remaining legacy devices that are not on a BES.

PassportSQW100-4/10.3.2.2339