Spyware In BlackBerry Updates For Users in the UAE 116
mulaz writes with this excerpt from The Register: "An update pushed out to BlackBerry users on the Etisalat network in the United Arab Emirates appears to contain remotely-triggered spyware that allows the interception of messages and emails, as well as crippling battery life. Sent out as a WAP Push message, the update installs a Java file that one curious customer decided to take a closer look at, only to discover an application intended to intercept both email and text messages, sending a copy to an Etisalat server without the user being aware of anything beyond a slightly excessive battery drain."
it's a feature (Score:3, Funny)
c'mon real time backup, can't beat that.
It's one from column A OR one from B not both. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's one from column A OR one from B not both. (Score:4, Funny)
It's slightly crippling?
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You can make the argument, by analogy, that "a slightly excessive gunshot wound to the kneecap" is "crippling."
Nothing to see here. Move along, Slashcitizen.
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" as well as crippling battery life." is not the same as "a slightly excessive battery drain."
A little to quick to post something?
Main Entry: cripple [reference.com]
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: hinder action, progress
Synonyms: bring to standstill, cramp, damage, destroy, halt, hamstring, impair, put out of action, ruin, spoil, stifle, vitiate
So, you're saying that extra battery drain doesn't impair battery life?
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Common usage of crippling implies grave impairment. You don't call a guy with a sore finger crippled, for example. Pretending that using a word is fine just because the dictionary says it means the same thing as another while blatantly ignoring common usage is disingenuous at best.
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But common usage in the tech field implies any functional impairment that's not intrinsic. Like software or hardware with features turned off [wikipedia.org]. If Google Earth doesn't give me all implemented features without making me pay for them [google.com], then it's crippled. It doesn't matter that I don't care much about the features I'm missing. Similarly, if an update reduces battery life by 10%, then the update cripples battery life.
UAE - no surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
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"As far as non-north-american countries go - the UAE is very progressive"
Hahahahaha, ahem, sorry I mean LOL. Are you serious?
What's so "progressive" about north american countries? Different isn't better per se.
"in North America we are an odd country and culture - we simply take it as the norm that nobody will listen to us"
That's at least a generalisation, and some might say naive.
"a foreigner in a position of influence that he would be monitored regularly if not constantly."
Yes, that would never happen in
Re:UAE - no surprise (Score:4, Informative)
"As far as non-north-american countries go - the UAE is very progressive" Hahahahaha, ahem, sorry I mean LOL. Are you serious? What's so "progressive" about north american countries? Different isn't better per se. "in North America we are an odd country and culture - we simply take it as the norm that nobody will listen to us" That's at least a generalisation, and some might say naive. "a foreigner in a position of influence that he would be monitored regularly if not constantly." Yes, that would never happen in north America.
Where shall I start? Women's Rights Minority Rights Freedom of Assembly Voting And this is just for starters. The UAE is very progressive, in comparison to other Middle Eastern countries, but still many decades behind the "decadent" West.
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Where shall I start?
The death penalty, no social security, no basic healthcare, the gun and the bible.
And this is just for starters. The USA is very progressive, in comparison to other American countries, but still many decades behind the "decadent" Europeans.
See, there's no truth, only peception.
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No, more along the lines of Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia...maybe.
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Where shall I start?
The death penalty, no social security, no basic healthcare, the gun and the bible.
And this is just for starters. The USA is very progressive, in comparison to other American countries, but still many decades behind the "decadent" Europeans.
See, there's no truth, only peception.
-Death Penalty: All countries have this, just not for the same crimes. Try committing treason in most places and see what that gets you, and Genocide is punishable by death in pretty much any country that doesn't have general Death Penalty. I'm not saying the US is right, but don't try to pretend your country won't kill someone if they feel they have just cause.
- Social Security: Umm, yes we do have that.
- Healthcare: Again, we do have that, through Medicaid and multiple other programs. We just don't have o
Australia (Score:2, Insightful)
Death Penalty, no we dont have it for any crime, this is the touchstone for the difference between civilised countries and others. Only uncivilised countries have the death penalty.
Socail security- You dont have a proper social security system compared with other countries.
Health Care-The US does not have universal health care but spends more than countries that do, quite an achievement.
The Gun- As much a religion to some in the US as the bible, we got rid of most of the guns in our society and we have no r
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The Federal act abolishing the death penalty is one of the most accessible pieces of legislation I've had the pleasure to read:
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So you expect the government to provide everything to you?
I always thought if you wanted something you worked towards getting it.
You want good health care, you pay for it.
You want a fancy car, you pay for it.
You want a good retirement, you pay for it.
If you do not cover your own ass, you are stuck. It is hard and cold, but it is reality. Do I expect the government to give me health care, no. The social security check will be less then the stamp it took to get it to me at the rate it is going. I am not count
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So you'd rather spend more money on inferior health care than have the government pay the bill for you (with, ultimately, your money)? We don't have the best health care in the world, we do have the most expensive. Seems like strong evidence that an inefficient government might be worse at bilking you than an extremely efficient for-profit corporation. If you want to pay for your health care out of pocket, that's great, but don't drag those of us without a masochistic streak down with you.
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You want good health care, you pay for it.
You want a fancy car, you pay for it.
You want a good retirement, you pay for it.
You want police protection, you pay for it.
You want fire coverage, you pay for it.
Oh wait...
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Bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
"No basic healthcare"? Sorry, fucktard, anyone who's sick can go to the ER and get treated. There is basic health care. "The gun and the bible". I understand that this whole "freedom of religion" thing pisses you off, as you'd like to force everyone to be an atheist. That's really fucking progressive. Perhaps you forgot the point of the gun. The gun is so that the government doesn't become like the European governments they left 250 years ago. So the government doesn't become like Hitler's Germany or Stalin
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
> By the way, I know how healthcare works in Europe.
> "Oh, you have insurance, come ahead now." Maybe
> Greece and Italy aren't part of Europe, but your
> universal healthcare seems to be a case of some
> pigs are more equal.
Eh? Can't comment on anywhere else, but in the UK having insurance makes no difference to your treatment in the NHS. It means you can go to a private provider, but it makes no difference to your NHS provision.
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I'm a Yank who spent nine years in Britain. After the first couple of years on the NHS, we gave up and went private for just about everything. As an example, my son needed three different operations. Each time we were told it was a six month wait on the NHS; we went private and were able to schedule
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An American and a Russian meet and American says:
- What about your freedoms, I for example can go in front of the White House and cry that American President is an idiot.
Russian answers:
- I also can go to the Red Square and cry that... American President is an idiot.
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But fail at seeing the present Europeans have also thrown out their feudal overlords.
And contrary to the US we here in Europe have not replaced them by commercial interests but instead prefer society as a whole to take care of the weak.
As a matter of fact the majority of Europeans are quite upset about the lack of compassion your system displays.
The European Union is a very
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Re:UAE - no surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Re:UAE - no surprise (Score:4, Informative)
If you have a new car (purchased in the last 2 years) it has a tracker in the license plate. I know this is true in Dubai, it may be different in other emirates. You will get in some deep trouble if the license plates are not affixed properly or appear to have been tampered with. You can see traffic accidents where the cops arrive, check the license plates are affixed and in order (on the right vehicle) and then their work is done and they leave. Same for the speed siren (maybe siren isn't the best term but when it's going at full volume it's impressive...can be heard very loudly from inside other cars...all mobile with windows up and aircon on)....it starts of as a gentle reminder and gets louder and louder and louder....
I hadn't mentioned homosexuality and I don't equate sex outside of marriage with homosexuality (necessarily).
Adultery = prison in UAE.
Dubai is liberal only compared to states where full sharia law is practised. If you're a foreigner or a local who dresses western style yes you can drink alcohol and if you're on a tourist visa you can share a hotel room with your partner without being married. If you're local or have a resident visa then you had better be very careful about your private life and keep it extremely private, even secret if you sleep with anyone other than your spouse. You'll notice that nobody in local dress is ever seen drinking alcohol. They won't be served and may have a lot of explaining to do. Similarly at the duty free shops and on UAE airlines an Arab won't get a drink unless in western clothes. It's a distinctly odd place where appearance is everything. You can *kind of* do as you please as long as you're furtive and don't embarrass anyone or do anything unconventional publicly. This 'freedom' doesn't extend to expressing yourself freely or to accessing uncensored tv, radio, or internet.
Re:UAE - no surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
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Bear in mind that a lot of the lower income South Asian workers are systematically defrauded by by the Emiratis. They are often promised much higher pay than they receive, their passports are stolen by their employers to prevent them leaving, and they work under terrible conditions.
A good many would never have gone their if they knew how it would work out.
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Never been to Vu's Bar, have you?
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You'll notice that nobody in local dress is ever seen drinking alcohol.
I lived in Ras AL Khaimah (UAE emirate) and saw loads of locals in local dress drinking alcohol. Certain bars were well known for it.
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we know where all the traffic radars are and so we slow down just in time
Do not try this in your Pajero: Over 250kmph, the cameras usually don't register a passing vehicle.
It's just the standard "bell" that comes out from the car when you go above 120km/h . I really don't think it's due to a government regulation, but it's probably dependant on the car itself.
It is not from the car manufacturer.
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It isn't?
My father once imported a car from Japan (a Nissan '87), and it had a (rather cute) chime that went off after 100km/h. Later on, we had a Toyota, and that too had a chime (that one sounded horrendous), which off after 120km/h. I have noticed that chime in other Japanese model too.
I think it comes standard with all Japanese cars, atleast.
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Really, I've never seen any car, in México or in the US, with a "chime" that went off over a certain speed.
This has to be some kind of requirement specific to the UAE.
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Apparently, VoIP services aren't completely blocked. It's just the ones that allow you to do cheap PC-to-Phone calls that are blocked, as it would kindof interfere with Etisalat's revenue. However, things like SIP and Google Talk, where it's just PC-to-PC works perfectly fi
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tor can be blocked if you can stop the initial connection to a tor node or can block tor's directory servers. This is something like playing whack-a-mole but it can be done and was in the past. I haven't been in UAE for a couple of years so perhaps they got bored of chasing their own tails. The other approach for a govt to take is to run tor exit nodes themselves and capture the traffic as it exits unencrypted, which doesn't give you both sides of an exchange but does give you a nice starting point for id
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You sure that this "siren" is infact caused by speeding?
I was in egypt a few years ago, and all the taxi drivers and most of the locals had installed a "manual override" switch on their dash for the car alarm. Basically they would flick the switch so the alarm would start howling, then they would drive like complete nutbars. Stuck behind a truck? Simple, your driver would flick the switch, honk their horn and flash their lights as quickly as possible and just pull out into oncoming traffic.
As far as I c
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Yes am sure :-) It's there to make your brain scream when you drive too fast. I was fairly amazed by it....had just arrived, my partner was living there and picked me up from the airport when this big SUV came screaming past with music *blasting* and an amazing and very non-musical noise accompanied it. She explained what it was, I didn't believe her so she put her foot down and gave me a demo. I'd been living in Bangkok before so for a noise to surprise me it really had to have an impact. Like someone el
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"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/321ffaf8-ad4b-11d9-ad92-00000e2511c8.html?nclick_check=1"
"Big Brother set to monitor UAE drivers
By John Griffiths in London
Published: April 15 2005 03:00 | Last updated: April 15 2005 03:00
IBM is to bring Big Brother to the roads of the United Arab Emirates via a$125m contract to fit surveillance "black boxes" in the country's cars, whose drivers are among the world's worst.
The technology developed for the deal, believed to be the largest in the telematics sector to date, marks th
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[Citation needed]
The reason I'm asking is because I've known several people who've worked in embassies over there, and this is not what they've told me about it.
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Could you please tell me what do you mean by "Progressive" ? . Coz, I have been living in many countries of Middle East for years and this includes UAE also and they all are same more or less. Like other countries, UAE has the following,
-- Family dictatorships which have absolute control about every element of the society and economy.
-- No Democracy in any tangible meaning of that term
-- Absolutely no freedom of expression(UAE does
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A statement that could only come from someone with basically no international experience or knowledge. UAE is as progressive as the Salem Witch Trials. The only reason people even notice it is because it's more progressive than neighbours like Saudi Arabia, which are among the most oppressive/regressive/big-messive in the world. This has allowed the Emirates to emerge as a more comfortable destination for regional oil money.
Further hi
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How slightly? (Score:5, Informative)
slightly excessive battery drain
As a crackberry user myself, I can tell you that sometimes a change in battery life isn't even something I would worry much about. Considering the number of applications that many of us have on our 'berries, the number we have in the background at any given time, and the amount we use the applications in the foreground, a noticeable shift in battery life between Tuesday and Wednesday might not be considered abnormal. I know there are people who just charge every night religiously because they always want to start with a full battery in the morning; if they ended at 45% instead of 55% they might not think anything of it as long as their charge made it to the end of the day.
On the other hand if they normally end at 45% and now they don't make it through the day, they would likely notice that.
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I know if I leave google maps on in the background on my blackberry, the batter life is pretty much cut in half. I notice that pretty quickly.
Why would they need this? (Score:2)
Something smells fishy.
Re:Why would they need this? (Score:4, Informative)
Supposedly, e-mail between the company's server and the device is encrypted (although at one time, there were some protests to using Blackberries because the messages pass through RIM's servers which were located somewhere in Canada - I don't know if that's still the case).
Re:Why would they need this? (Score:4, Informative)
Nice, I'm paying to be spied upon! (Score:2)
So I am paying for my bandwidth twice, first to receive the message and a second time for it to be forwarded to TPTB. Talk about being fsckd!
More information (Score:5, Interesting)
the register has a followup (including some code) here [theregister.co.uk].
Apparently [etisalat.ae] etisalat claims the spyware is for troubleshooting during the 2g to 3g upgrade.
Re:More information (Score:4, Insightful)
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Removal utility link deleted (Score:3, Interesting)
The Register article stated:
It pointed to this link: http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=BlackBerryDeviceSoftware&thread.id=5504&view=by_date_ascending&page=2 [blackberry.com]
But if you follow it you get:
Interesting.
Doug
No, not interesting (Score:5, Informative)
It's just a typo in the link, and for some reason the 404 page says "deleted" instead of just "not found". If you read the elreg comments page, you can find the corrected URL and the thread is still live:
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=BlackBerryDeviceSoftware&thread.id=5632&view=by_date_ascending&page=1 [blackberry.com]
Was RIM complicit in the spyware distro? (Score:2)
I'm not very familiar with RIM's network architecture, so it wasn't clear to me whether the UAE needed RIM's help in distributing the spyware or whether it was entirely the doing of the local phone carrier in the UAE.
Would the UAE had to have had RIM's help or did they simply buy the services of the third-party spyware vendor?
-Sean
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It was sent as a WAP push (a bit like sending something to a PC as an email attachment and saying "please run me"). They wouldn't have needed RIM's help to do it (although assistance from someone who (a) had a clue and (b) was evil would have helped them achieve their goal with less comical results). RIM are unlikely to have wanted to assist because it's not exactly a "good news" story for them.
Carriers do have a level of control over what a Blackberry based on their network can do by controlling what "se
Re:Did it install on all Blackberry's connected (Score:4, Interesting)
SS8 says their software is used by "some of the largest service providers in the world," so it may have been more surreptitiously pushed in phases by your own provider already.
Bum, bum, buuuuummmm.
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That's a good point (Score:2)
Now.. the President owns a Blackberry. Does he know about this? Foreigners could be spying on our President's texting. That would not be helpful in treaty negotiation.
cryptwitter - is there an app for that? (Score:1)
Maybe they/we need a crypto-twitter app?
I am ashamed.......... (Score:1)
More update! (Score:1)
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homosex is sinful, you dirty fucking sodomite.
So says "Reasoned Mind". Funny.
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-1, Flamebait
While there is a little bit of truth to this (having money and the ability to cross the country at a moment's notice helps your chances), it's mostly false. The organizations that manage organ transplants have some pretty strict standards about that sort of thing and do audits to look for preferential treatment. It basically boils down to "you can't buy your way to the front of the list".
But while you can't get yourself at the front of the list, what you CAN do is get yourself on multiple lists
Re:Steve Jobs is a flamer (Score:5, Insightful)
You say it as if its a bad thing.
That's because it is.
I, for one, would rather see Jobs get his liver than, say, some old person who worked as a machinist for 30 years, or even worse, an alcoholic native american.
Yeah, because the only choices were either him or the two extreme examples you've given. There are probably plenty of people on the list far more deserving than Jobs who got bumped down because they couldn't afford to buy their way to the top.
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And how, pray-tell, do you make such a determination?
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So...hop off your high horse for a minute there partner and let us examine what happened. An individual, faced with death, did everything he could to survive. That isn't exactly much different than anyone else. We could even get further into vague metrics like how
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What if I "earned" my money by winning the lottery? Insider trading? Other non-productive financial shenanigans? There are a lot of ways to get rich without providing anything of value, or even by making the world a worse place.
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2. Life is unfair. Survival is a game where cheating to win is acceptable. The expectation of an equitable system is nonsense. This is why the whole judgment/afterlife business is so popular regardless of culture/religion. I make n
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I'd rather see the machinist live.
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You know, the market has been speculating that without Jobs, Apple will fall apart and the parade of cool products will grind to a halt. Like it did back in the 80s and 90s when Scully was president. In that regard, Jobs provides thousands of people with JOBS, income, health care, etc.
I bet you would be hard pressed to find another person on the list more deserving on that scale.
Forgetting that, supposing that he bought his way to the top of a transplant list, where do you think that money went? Some black