Today in TechRIM hacked for aiding police in London riot investigation
While social technology has played a pivotal role in past citizen uprisings, it may have also helped spread a wide swath of violence and looting throughout the London area over the past four days. Yesterday, BlackBerry maker RIM issued a statement that it would cooperate with English authorities to investigate how its mobile messaging client, BlackBerry Messenger (better known as BBM), contributed to the riots.
Today, RIM's official Inside BlackBerry blog was infiltrated by a hacking collective known as TeaMp0isoN, with a threat: "If you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it."
BBM is a phone-based instant messaging system that allows BlackBerry users to chat quickly in real-time — and its instantaneous and private nature might have made it the ideal communication platform. RIM's statement that it would cooperate with police suggested that the company might provide authorities with the identifying BlackBerry PIN numbers belonging to Londoners suspected to have taken part in the violence. Each BlackBerry phone has a unique hexadecimal 8-character PIN, which RIM tracks and users are unable to de-identify.
The London-area rioting was sparked by the controversial police shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan, who was stopped by authorities in a cab in the Tottenham area on August 5th. While BBM might be singled out, rioters also reportedly evaded authorities and spread their destructive efforts through Twitter and Facebook. Still, it's not all bad news: Londoners are rallying to clean up the damage through Twitter as well.
[via TheNextWeb]
[Image credit: AndyArmstrong]
More from Tecca:
