One of the great things about BlackBerry devices is the ability to password protect the device itself, as well as certain applications or areas on the device from prying eyes. Browse BlackBerry App World or even the CrackBerry app store and you’ll find a whole host of third party apps that allow you to password protect files, folders, photos, BBM, website passwords etc but the BlackBerry itself has one built in already - Password Keeper. You can also download a BlackBerry app that lets you save billing information, credit card details etc to save you time in filling out forms. Of course this is also password protected with a master password. You also would not want anybody accessing that kind of information, bringing me to the point of this post. ElcomSoft, a sotware company, has developed the first commercially available product that allows you to access passwords that are stored in Password Keeper as well as the information stored in BlackBerry Wallet.
Previous versions of ElcomSoft’s Password Breaker only decrypted passwords for backups of a BlackBerry device so that you could restore those backups when you had forgotten the password used to encrypt the backup. But even when recovering those backups the password data kept within Password Keeper and details within BlackBerry Wallet would still be protected by the master passwords governing those applications. With this latest update, the Password Breaker can access details within those two previously undecryptable apps.
At first I thought this can’t be right but then again, there are some cases where you may forget your master password and may need to reset or recover the password. The Password Breaker will be able to help you recover those passwords and even decrypt keychains of third party apps. Now this is all good and well for personal use and recovering your own forgotten password details on your BlackBerry device but this software is commercially available, what happens when others use it for the wrong reasons? The software does require you to have the backup file you want to recover the passwords from so that makes it a little harder for just anybody to use.
It’s still quite a scary thought knowing that there is software like this out there. Software that can be bought for use in the home or even by corporations and authorities. Would this stop you from using these applications? Would you look at using third party applications to store your password from now on? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.