RIM, Nokia and Apple have provided the Indian Military with backdoors

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Grand Master

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On January 6th reports of Symantec (makers of Norton Anitvirus) being hacked surfaced. The group of hackers behind the attack behind the attack were from India. In a statement issued by a member from the Lords of Dharamraja group (badass name!), the guys said:

As of now we start sharing with all our brothers and followers information from the Indian Militaty (sic) Intelligence servers, so far we have discovered within the Indian Spy Programme source codes of a dozen software companies which have signed agreements with Indian TANCS programme and CBI

Ignoring the typing error, gaining access to Indian Military?s Intelligence servers is pretty damning for the agency. The hack got covered since the hackers claimed to have acces to Norton?s source code. Earlier today I came across scans of a set of documents that are internal communications between the Indian Military. The documents claim the existence of a system known as RINOA SUR. While I did not find what SUR stands for but RINOA is RIM, NOkia and Apple. And this is where things start to get very interesting, according to the set of documents, the RINOA SUR platform was used to spy on the USCC?the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Let?s take a moment for that to digest. Here?s an image from the documents underlining the relevant part:

im-hack-01.png

The documents contain snippets of emails sent by members of the USCC. Apparently, RINOA SUR platform has been declared a success and the Indian Navy has shown interest in the same. The leaked military documents suggest, RINOA were arm twisted into providing backdoor access in exchange for operating in India:

im-hack-02.png

While the Indian government recently gave the nation?s premiere spy agency?RAW?permission to access any citizen?s electronic communication, the Department of Telecommunications has reached out to the Interpol for help in decrypting communication via services like RIM?s BlackBerry.

Source: ZDNet

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Matthew_Thepc

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RINOA etc.

Everybody provided their backdoors.

+1, it seems that India was trading market presence for the backdoors...not really limited to Nokia/RIM/Apple, really all mobile companies were forced into it (as far as I can tell)

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Grand Master

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+1, it seems that India was trading market presence for the backdoors...not really limited to Nokia/RIM/Apple, really all mobile companies were forced into it (as far as I can tell)

Which makes it worse...

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guru

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huh, so Indian hacker group hacked govt servers to find that govt was snooping in on citizens conversations.. couldn't they just subscribed to google news lol

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Grand Master

+LogicalApex MVC

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Why is this really an issue? In order to do business anywhere you have to, and should, respect their laws. It is up to the people of that nation to decide what those laws should, or should not, be.

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Pam14160

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Why is this really an issue? In order to do business anywhere you have to, and should, respect their laws. It is up to the people of that nation to decide what those laws should, or should not, be.

Agree 100%. Also when you are looking at a market of over a billon possible customers you do what you need to get your foot in the door.

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Grand Master

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Why is this really an issue? In order to do business anywhere you have to, and should, respect their laws. It is up to the people of that nation to decide what those laws should, or should not, be.

And companies (and shareholders) should also respect human rights and not do business in markets that force them to comprimise their customers. Hell, they should not even make these available to the US (or EU) in my opinion. Detention without charge or trial, torture, censorship, harassment of political oponents, this all goes on at home (in the US and one or two of those in the EU) and much worse goes on abroad (e.g. Syria, Bahrain, Iran, China, Pakistan, Saudi etc.) and you think selling your customers to anyone that wishes to do these things to their own citizens is just a cost of doing business?

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FMH

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Wait. Apple, RIM and Nokia giving backdoor entrances to Indian army. Doesn't it affect other countries? These companies sell phone everywhere.

Wouldn't it affect the privacy and security for people living elsewhere, like me. :crazy:

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Grand Master

Seahorsepip Veteran

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Wait. Apple, RIM and Nokia giving backdoor entrances to Indian army. Doesn't it affect other countries? These companies sell phone everywhere.

Wouldn't it affect the privacy and security for people living elsewhere, like me. :crazy:

No, the just get a different firmware flashed on their phones so if you reflash a indian phone to US or EU software you've gotten rid of those backdoors too...

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FMH

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No, the just get a different firmware flashed on their phones so if you reflash a indian phone to US or EU software you've gotten rid of those backdoors too...

Oh, okay in that case.

But still, it is a gross violation of privacy. There is a lot of corruption. No doubt, that these backdoor entrances are abused like hell.

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guru

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No, the just get a different firmware flashed on their phones so if you reflash a indian phone to US or EU software you've gotten rid of those backdoors too...

and get the US,EU version of backdoors :/

i doubt these backdoors are specific to just phones sold in the country. i'd assume that'd atleast be region specific.

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Seahorsepip Veteran

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and get the US,EU version of backdoors :/

i doubt these backdoors are specific to just phones sold in the country. i'd assume that'd atleast be region specific.

I think you won't get any backdoords on these, the punishments from organisations who investigate this 24/7 are too big and it will ruin your market share too as company...

And I've never seen any region specific firmware untill now :p, I've only seen mostly country specific ^^

So after all I don't think that we have to worry that hard, it's not the fault of the companies after all, they just want to sell their products no matter what it costs.

And on the otherside I'm glad that the goverment does these type of things after years of corruption they may start to fight finally organized crime on a big scale which is more important then the privacy of your textmessage you've sent to your friend ^^

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Grand Master

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what about phones which you can flash custom and open source firmware, like the Android etc....

Drivers etc. generally aren't free software and in some cases can't be overwritten by the user of the device, but sometimes can be updated over the air.

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