BlackBerry, master cryptographic key held by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from 2010

Canadian police have obtained the master encryption key of the BlackBerry services about six years ago. In return it is a pair of articles published by News and Vice Motherboard, which states that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has used the key in a criminal investigation carried out between 2010 and 2012 to intercept more than 1 million messages sent through the owner BBM service.

It is not yet clear how the RCMP has come into possession of the master key of the popular BlackBerry encryption. Some documents drawn up by the courts involved in the processes confirmed that the police maintained at Ottawa a server to "simulate a mobile device capable of intercepting a message intended for a legitimate recipient," writes Deputy. Hence the processing system deciphered the message using the master key of the BlackBerry.

The master key is still the one used up to four years ago? Canadian police forces continue to use the shut-off system described by Vice? Are two questions that remain to this day unknown and the two new reports do not help us to shed light on the issue. BlackBerry has been using for some time a key global cryptographic apparently unknown to any external body, which was used to seal the BBM messages within only affected devices.

Communications were therefore protected, even if CEO John Chen has never hidden that his company was willing to cooperate with law enforcement in particular circumstances. Last year he wrote on his blog that the BlackBerry is "opposed to the idea that technology companies should refuse to respond to reasonable requests for legal access." The availability of the master key only by local police forces remains a very thorny issue.

This means that Canadian citizens BlackBerry devices holders are potentially for years victims of the Canadian government surveillance. Deputy writes: "If the master key still resided on a HQ server RCMP the potential consequences could be significant. It would mean that the police have for years enjoyed access to mobile phones of Canadians without any suspicion on the part of the latter ".

It is fair to note, however, that BlackBerry offers the opportunity for companies to customize the encryption key in order to have a unique and personal. To being potentially vulnerable are so individual Canadian citizens, with thousands of messages of BlackBerry users who have been intercepted and decrypted by the name of "Project Mercy" of the RCMP investigation started with a murder dictated by an organization of the Mafia Montreal, declared an accomplice in 2011.

Vice has only recently come into contact with the documentation of the case, divulgandola publicly in recent hours. Encryption is now an important topic in the field of computer security, with many companies that have recently deployed next to Apple in the case of San Bernardino massacre. Apple has refused to cooperate with the government, but it is evident that not all technology companies share the same way of thinking.

We do not know if the BlackBerry has collaborated directly with the Canadian government, and if you continue to do so as the company and the RCMP, as Vice contacted, refused to provide an answer. We know that the Canadian technology company has provided assistance and that an inspector of the RCMP, Mark Flynn, had been informed not to reveal details of the procedures to avoid damaging the business of the company: "It would not be a good marketing move to say that we work with police ", they were according to Vice his words during a testimony.