British intelligence agency called in to break BlackBerry encryption

[John Wilson]

On 29 August 2011 11:18, Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/british-spy-agency-called-in-to-crack-blackberry-encryption/12281
>
>
> "British intelligence service, MI5 has been drafted in to assist its sister
> service, GCHQ in cracking the BlackBerry encryption code"
>
> Now GCHQ are the code boys and MI5 are supercops, and maybe Zdnet just got
> it the wrong way round.
>
> Or maybe GCHQ are asking MI5 for help in collecting plaintext/ciphertext
> pairs in order to attempt a crack - MI5 get the plaintexts by seizing
> Blackberries (or more likely getting the ordinary cops to seize them) and
> reading the messages on them, and GCHQ gets the cipherexts by interception.


Why would they not just buy a couple of handsets and send as many
messages as they like back and forth? They'd get as many
plaintext/ciphertext pairs as they wanted and they wouldn't need a
RIPA warrant.

John Wilson