back to article Blackberry touts UNCERTIFIED 'secure' slab in hunt for public sector biz

Blackberry unveiled what it claimed was a "high-security tablet" in Hannover on Saturday – even though the device awaits approval from Germany's infosec agency. The vendor showed off its latest product – dubbed SecuTABLET, which is based on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 – at the annual CeBIT trade show. Blackberry said in a …

  1. Chris Miller

    For those as confused as I was:

    CeBIT doesn't start until tomorrow and will be (as ever) in Han(n)over. This pre-emptive unveiling took place in Düsseldorf where Blackberry have their German office.

    HTH

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lots of claims ..

    .. little proof.

    Having said that, QNX has potential, but that was until Blackberry decided to allow Android apps. I hope they didn't make that mistake with this bit of kit.

    I'll wait until people I trust have shaken the thing down before I believe any claims of "secure".

    1. Hans 1

      Re: Lots of claims ..

      Actually, the android runtime in bb10 can be managed by BES - you can disable it.

      It is by far the securest platform, I installed whatsapp (native BB10 release) the other day and it wanted to access my contacts, I disabled that "privilege" and could not use it ... WTF^10. Anybody who uses that poor excuse for messenger software surely entered email address and its password into facebook, when fb kindly asked to phish for contacts.

      That was the one off, software mostly works even when you disable the odd privilege ... of course, some features will not work, but mst of the time, when you are not an idiot and do not disable vital features for the app, it just works.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lots of claims ..

        "It is by far the securest platform"

        Only 55 security vulnerabilities so far you mean?

        Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 both have zero so far and Windows Phone 7 had 1 minor one.

        1. Jess

          Re: Lots of claims .. Windows Phone

          Windows Phone is supplied by an American Company and therefore subject to the patriot act. BB is Canadian and therefore not.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Lots of claims .. Windows Phone

            "Windows Phone is supplied by an American Company and therefore subject to the patriot act. BB is Canadian and therefore not."

            Last time I checked, Blackberry had an office in the USA and therefore are subject to all American laws.

            I note also that Blackberry bent over to give the UAE, India, etc. access to unencrypted comms and even installed local servers to fully enable it...

      2. Jess

        Re: whatsapp

        Just curious how it could work without access to your contacts telephone numbers. Manually enter all your contacts to a separate database?

        1. Hans 1

          Re: whatsapp

          >Manually enter all your contacts to a separate database?

          For example, YES. BB10 has got "copy-paste" and you will not use whatsapp with all your contacts, would you ? Do you really want whatsapp to phish all your contacts ? No 3rdparty app on my phone has access to SMS, contacts, email, calendars ... and access to shared storage exclusively if I consider it needs to ...

          Remember, BB10 is for business ... I was installing whatsapp because that is what the son in the US is using ... I finally ditched it, I do have sensitive (customers, CTO, CEO) contacts/mail/SMS on my device. Again, this is a serious business device.

          Oh, and I forgot, the app also wanted access to my SMS', apparently for "activation" because it is for users who are too cretin to copy paste a confirmation number across.

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Lots of claims ..

      "Having said that, QNX has potential, but that was until Blackberry decided to allow Android apps."

      Er, you clearly don't know how BlackBerry have gone about it. BlackBerry separates personal apps / data from Enterprise apps / data using an AES256 encrypted filesystem (lookup BlackBerry Balance). You can put anything you like, including Android apps, on the personal side of the phone without running a risk of it seeing any Enterprise data. In that sense an Android app is no more or less dangerous than a native QNX app.

      Most of Android's problems are related to the OS's inability to guarantee separation of data and enforcement of permissions. BB10 is far, better at this. Arguably it's a much better place to run Android apps than Android is.

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