Long time lurker, first time poster, hope my post helps. Not sure if some other anons have answered these in other threads, I haven't checked everything since threads are moving fast.

>>388633

The main feature of BB phone has always been their MDM server (BES). It gives you total full control of a BB handset hooked to it. Once a BB handset is hooked to a BES server, all Internet connection made from the phone MUST go through that BES server. No traffic leaking to Google, Facebook, etc. The BES server also provides additional layer of encryption of the traffic with key generated and kept locally by the BES server owner. The Internet connection that goes through BES server can be monitored, filtered, whatever by the BES sysadmin. You can also monitor all calls, emails, texts, BBM messages. The BES sysadmin is literally the god of all the handsets hooked to it.

I remember India government want BES server key, and BB told them "We don't have them. Those belongs to the respective BES server owners," and then they got kicked out of India.

Blackberry bought Certicom for their BES encryption, and Certicom was the first one to have elliptic curve encryption back then.

I think BB was also the first one to do device-specific hardware keys, secure booting, etc. At least for consumer electronics.

Some BB10 handset models have certification from DoD.

Side note: They got their certification during BHO's administration. BHO himself used a custom BB handset as soon as he became POTUS, before finally switching to a Samsung phone near the end of his second term.

>>388688

BB bought QNX, and made the microkernel the base for their BB10 handset. It's a microkernel, with everything else siding in userspace as services (even graphics driver), making kernel exploitation very difficult because the attack vector is very small.

>I think it is possible Blackberry still makes phones, but they're secure and only for the elite.

The last thing I heard from them, they stopped making BB10 handsets. They tried making a secure (lol) Android handset, then shredded their in-house hardware team, and licensed their "secure Android" to someone else. Now another company makes Android-based Blackberry handset. Then they transformed their MDM offering into something cloud-based (all your data are belong to us), and opened up their patents to be licensed for anyone who wants to.

I haven't kept up with them for a long time. I was a huge fan of BB10 handsets. Very clean, very easy to program for. POSIX compliant with Qt-based GUI framework. One thing I also noticed is how my brain always goes into an overdrive when in front of it, thinking what could be done next.

>Aaron Swartz

Every time someone brought up his name, I can't help but think of Ian Murdock as well, not sure why.

What really happened to Ian?

>>391811

Adding several things since I posted this in a hurry. Might not have significance, but maybe nice to have:

Until Thorsten Heins's (very short) tenure as CEO, some BB10 handsets were still made in Canada. Typically a limited batch of their flagship phones. The rest were made in Mexico.

When John Chen came in, the first thing he did was he shredded the BB10 team, as well as the in house hardware team.

Afterwards, he started partnership with Foxconn for their handset manufacturing citing cost reasons.

After releasing two very underwhelming BB10 phones using ancient SoCs, and have abysmal sales (intentional sabotage?), they decided to make Android handsets.

When BB made their "secure" Android, one of the unique feature that belonged to them at that time was the secure boot. I heard they "contributed" that back to Google.

After BB gave up entirely on hardware, they partnered with TCL Corporation. TCL now makes BB-branded Android handset.

Turning their MDM offering (BES) from local installation to a cloud based solution also happened under John Chen.