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It's so strange to me how little information there is on the internet about how the BlackBerry really worked. Other phone OSes, both modern ones like iOS and A

It's so strange to me how little information there is on the internet about how the BlackBerry really worked. Other phone OSes, both modern ones like iOS and Android, as well as ancient ones like Symbian or even the Nokia 3310 firmware, have their internals well described. All I could find about the BlackBerry was that it used some Java-based OS, but no detailed information about its architecture, conventions, file system layouts, security properties or technical capabilities seems to be available. The communications protocols are just as mysterious, especially on the phone-to-server side. I know it required some kind of carrier integration to work, which makes me think it wasn't just a bog-standard connection over TCP/IP, but I have no idea what it actually was. There's some information in BlackBerry programming books, which can still be found in the "usual places", some old BlackHat presentations, which seem to mostly focus on the enterprise server component, as well as some company history and brief descriptions of the technical choices made in "Losing the Signal", but that's about it. Even Nintendo's OS is understood much more widely, despite Nintendo being much more secretive and litigious.

amaccuish 1y ago
Quite agree, I find it really sad. The most that is out there was about the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, but the docs were always light on details. And yes that one BlackHat presentation about SRP. I'd love to know more about the GPRS side of things, how their NOCs were connected to carriers, etc.
gjsman-1000 1y ago
> despite Nintendo being much more secretive and litigious Eh, kind of? Nintendo has never interfered with solely modding your Switch, or the tools to do so, and will not ban you for loading CFW. Install CFW, overclock your Switch, even cheat in offline games, no interference. Their lines in the sand for years have been changing your profile image to something arbitrary (and possibly NSFW), installing a pirated game, cheating online, or tampering with system logs. That’s when the ban hammer hits; and the tools for doing those get targeted.
- Nullabillity 1y ago
  They were never particularly competent about it (from the technical side, anyway), but https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Channel#Changelog https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Channel#Changelog is a pretty sad/hilarious read.
Spooky23 1y ago
They shared information with large customers with NDA. They were old school telecom — very tight. Everything traversed their network. It was a bonkers architecture that would not fly today. The other thing about that obscurity is it enabled all sorts of weird use cases. Because the devices were identified to the BlackBerry network, you could message without user assignment. It was common for corporate and political people to use them for unaccountable, compartmentalized communications. You could build ad hoc networks of people without there a record of who was who, and periodically reshuffle the devices to add and remove people. It was basically Nextel DirectConnect for texting / “the wire” for corporate people.
- dec0dedab0de 1y ago
  I think most corporate blackberries were tied to an enterprise server that tracked everything they did.
  - Hilift 1y ago
    Indeed. The FBI made a lot of cases with that. It wasn't unusual for a corporate user to not know that all of the texts, contacts, and numbers called were available centrally.
    - nothercastle 1y ago
      I assume they are on iMessage as well at some level are they not?
      - Barbing 1y ago
        If any party receiving an iMessage uses iCloud backup, it should be available to the US govt one way or another. Am I correct that parties who don’t use backup are indeed messaging “entirely” privately, barring Harvest Now, Decrypt Later?
        ThomasBb 1y ago
numpad0 1y ago
? There are more private stuff in the world than what's public on the Internet. Naively believing that private parts must be the minor part and basically everything should be already on the WWW is pure arrogance. Google paid a lot of effort a while back into putting up obsolete as hell 130nm Skywater PDK on the public 'net. I've seen people on social media describing their anxiety from just seeing some industry specific shapes and forms out in the open, despite knowing those files were thoroughly cleared for release and completely fine for anyone to see. Reading up stuffs on WWW and thinking it should cover most of everything is like placing yourself in clothes of pre-war physicists who thought physics is all figured out like a sunny backyard except there's a tiny black pinhole in the sky called quantum physics that idiots are obsessed with. There's a whole universe(s) behind it.
schlauerfox 1y ago
We used to install the server-side exchange connector on windows small business server. It was an involved process to get working, but pretty reliable. Also interesting is some comments from former RIM employee, turned woodworking youtuber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLxjXP-XCJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLxjXP-XCJA matthias wandel

amaccuish 1y ago

Quite agree, I find it really sad. The most that is out there was about the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, but the docs were always light on details. And yes that one BlackHat presentation about SRP. I'd love to know more about the GPRS side of things, how their NOCs were connected to carriers, etc.

gjsman-1000 1y ago

> despite Nintendo being much more secretive and litigious Eh, kind of? Nintendo has never interfered with solely modding your Switch, or the tools to do so, and will not ban you for loading CFW. Install CFW, overclock your Switch, even cheat in offline games, no interference. Their lines in the sand for years have been changing your profile image to something arbitrary (and possibly NSFW), installing a pirated game, cheating online, or tampering with system logs. That’s when the ban hammer hits; and the tools for doing those get targeted.

Nullabillity 1y ago
They were never particularly competent about it (from the technical side, anyway), but https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Channel#Changelog https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Channel#Changelog is a pretty sad/hilarious read.

Spooky23 1y ago

They shared information with large customers with NDA. They were old school telecom — very tight. Everything traversed their network. It was a bonkers architecture that would not fly today. The other thing about that obscurity is it enabled all sorts of weird use cases. Because the devices were identified to the BlackBerry network, you could message without user assignment. It was common for corporate and political people to use them for unaccountable, compartmentalized communications. You could build ad hoc networks of people without there a record of who was who, and periodically reshuffle the devices to add and remove people. It was basically Nextel DirectConnect for texting / “the wire” for corporate people.

dec0dedab0de 1y ago
I think most corporate blackberries were tied to an enterprise server that tracked everything they did.
- Hilift 1y ago
  Indeed. The FBI made a lot of cases with that. It wasn't unusual for a corporate user to not know that all of the texts, contacts, and numbers called were available centrally.
  - nothercastle 1y ago
    I assume they are on iMessage as well at some level are they not?
    - Barbing 1y ago
      If any party receiving an iMessage uses iCloud backup, it should be available to the US govt one way or another. Am I correct that parties who don’t use backup are indeed messaging “entirely” privately, barring Harvest Now, Decrypt Later?
      - ThomasBb 1y ago

numpad0 1y ago

? There are more private stuff in the world than what's public on the Internet. Naively believing that private parts must be the minor part and basically everything should be already on the WWW is pure arrogance. Google paid a lot of effort a while back into putting up obsolete as hell 130nm Skywater PDK on the public 'net. I've seen people on social media describing their anxiety from just seeing some industry specific shapes and forms out in the open, despite knowing those files were thoroughly cleared for release and completely fine for anyone to see. Reading up stuffs on WWW and thinking it should cover most of everything is like placing yourself in clothes of pre-war physicists who thought physics is all figured out like a sunny backyard except there's a tiny black pinhole in the sky called quantum physics that idiots are obsessed with. There's a whole universe(s) behind it.

schlauerfox 1y ago

We used to install the server-side exchange connector on windows small business server. It was an involved process to get working, but pretty reliable. Also interesting is some comments from former RIM employee, turned woodworking youtuber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLxjXP-XCJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLxjXP-XCJA matthias wandel