Some of you may have read my blog article last year about the BlackBerry mobile device: Hacking the BlackBerry along with the associated whitepaper, Blackberry Security: Ripe for the picking? We decided not to widely distribute that paper for a number of reasons, including the fact that the model reviewed was a tad on the old side (BlackBerry 7290 circa 2004). Well, fast-forward to 2007, when I was supplied with a shiny new BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and a blank sheet of paper.
As I alluded to in my previous blog, the Pearl represents a significant departure for Research In Motion; a departure from the world of purely corporate utility, and an arrival at the world of consumer-oriented features. The device sports a beautifully stylized slimline form-factor, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a removable media card as standard. Of course, all the...
A few months ago, my boss plonked a box on my desk and said "see what you can do with that." That's how I was introduced to the Blackberry. I've been interested in all kinds of PDAs and mobile phones for years now, but I'd never come across a Blackberry. I suppose that up until recently, it has been the preserve of key government and corporate employees, not average-Joe software engineers like me. However, the Blackberry is emerging as an ever more popular platform for the general public. In the next few weeks that followed, I noticed a common thread in the architecture and features of the device: security first and functionality second.
What do I mean? Well, take Bluetooth for example. When you're looking at the box of your shiny new Blackberry and you see that it has Bluetooth support, you might think "great, I can use it with my laptop to go online while on the move." Bzzzt—wrong. Although the Blackberry does...
