Tool Created To Hack BlackBerry Passwords

A Russian security firm has upgraded a phone-password cracking software with the ability to figure out the master device password for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices.

Elcomsoft said on Thursday that before it developed the product, it was believed that there was no way to uncover a device password on a BlackBerry smartphone or PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry smartphones are configured to wipe all data on the phone if a password is typed incorrectly 10 times in a row, the company said.

Elcomsoft said it figured a way around the problem using a BlackBerry’s removable media card, but only if a user has configured their smartphone in a specific way. In order for Elcomsoft’s software to be successful, a user must have enabled the feature to encrypt data on the media card.

The feature is disabled by default, but Elcomsoft said around 30% of BlackBerry users have it enabled for extra security.

The company’s software can then analyze the encrypted media card and use a brute-force method to figure out a password, which involves trying millions of possible password combinations per second until one works.

Elcomsoft said it can recover a seven-character password in less than an hour if the password is all lower-case or all capital letters. The software does not need access to the actual BlackBerry device but just the encrypted media card.

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