BlackBerry blog hacked with pro-riot warning to RIM

RIM has become the latest victim of the London riots after an official BlackBerry blog was hacked and defaced with a message telling the company not to assist the authorities in their attempts to capture riot suspects.

RIM issued a statement on Monday saying that it will comply with "local telecoms operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials".

"Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act [RIP Act] and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces," it added.

However, the Inside BlackBerry blog appeared to be defaced on Tuesday afternoon by a hacker named Teampoison demanding that RIM does not assist the police in case "innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all".

"If you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to people's BlackBerry Messengers you will regret it," the message warned.

"We have access to your database which includes your employees' information; e.g - Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc - now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters.... do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps?"

However, the authorities may already be going down another route, according to mobile experts.

Gartner analyst Leif-Olof Wallin told V3 that any requests made by the police under the RIP Act will in the first instance go to mobile operators, as they own the relevant data packets, including location data.

"RIM will only assist operators by deciphering the security key for the messages that were sent," he added.

"BlackBerry Messenger only has a low-grade security key that's the same across all BlackBerry devices, so the likes of MI5 could easily decrypt it if they wanted."