Got spyware? UAE-based carrier puts out “patch” for BlackBerry, potentially being spyware
by The PocketBerry Team
Picture a world where all your messages and emails can viewed and accessed at any time by others. Sure your carrier has access to records, messages, and other things of that nature in regard to your cellular phone, but what if you found out that information like that was being passed on through a third party source? There was a recent update for BlackBerry devices over in the United Arab Emirates based carrier Etisalat which was supposedly a “performance enhancement patch” included in it as they had advertised but turned out to be otherwise. It turns out there was potential for some spyware in it, giving the carrier Etisalat the abilities to keep a close eye on customers’ messages sent back and forth via BlackBerry.
The very first suspicion of this update drew people’s attention closer as BlackBerry users noticed a dramatically reduced battery life and lots of sluggish movement in performance after the update, which sometime later led to Nigel Gourlay who is a computer programmer to go deep into the update and see what was going on. After looking thoroughly into the patch, it was found to be that there was a software coming from an electronic surveillance company called SS8. As it isn’t always active by default, Etisalat has the option to trigger it on and off as they please to get access to your text messaging and emails.
In the end it was said that the software was not designed for a “large scale deployment” as Engadget put it but it did slow down well over 100,000 BlackBerry devices in the region.
We should always look into updates for software that we download, as we really do not know what we are getting sometimes, and the programmers writing the updates can get better and better at hiding it away from us.
Source: Engadget
-by Mac Jadalhack
