It's pretty much common sense that when you're ditching your old cell phone you want to
erase your personal data, contacts and emails -- or at least try to. Oh sure, there are plenty of examples of
failing to do so, but this one's rather... shall we say, "special." Some operatives at Fox 5 in Washington, D.C. booked over to the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters' yard sale yesterday, and they saw some ultra cheap Blackberrys -- just $20 a pop, probably an
inventor's discount -- so they picked up a few, undoubtedly thinking they'd make nice holiday gifts. They were kind of surprised to find that, after giving the 'Berrys some juice, one of them had 50 contacts for "campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists" as well as hundreds of emails. When reached for comment, a campaign spokesperson said that "procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure," followed minutes later by a blank email CC'd to his entire address book with the subject line "We're so screwed."
posted Dec 12th 2008 3:58PM
Lol. I love the screen of the blackberry. the sad part is that i think that she WOULD do some thing like that
Attachment: top_secret.PDF ????
Come ON...who is stupid enough to name the file that? Btw, I hope her e-mail password isn't "password" or "IRA" or "alaska"
Irish Republican Army?
I'm pretty sure that picture is a photoshop Tom. It isn't anywhere in the article.
@tom
It's "maverick"
That is of coarse if she were smart enough to use a blackberry.
Nothing like insulting the IQ of someone else while having no idea how to spell. Well done, Med.
The point still stands. If Caribou Barbie is stupid enough to have a password so insecure that someone could hack it I question if she has the intelligence to run a crackberry.
Its an example you know.
Hey, uh, Cindy?
Yeah baby, it's J-Mac, I kinda got lost, you wanna send over the jet and $100,000 cash? I wanna get a surprise gift for Joe that plumba dude but I can't find my amex...
its JTP, not Joe the Plumber.
That is fucking great! What else do you expect from n00bs?
"McCain-Palin campaign headquarters' yard sale"? Does that sound right?
No, It doesn't.
seriously... do they have yards in alaska? More like frozen lake sale, or igloo extravaganza.
PWNAGE!
haha, inventors discount. el oh el.
did you know, gods of death love apples
BUH!
Oh God. You mean they weren't smart enough to have a password policy on these devices that forces a wipe upon 10 unsuccessful passwords like most corporate Blackberries?
top_secret.PDF
don't have imagination to come up a more real name for the file?
i think thats the point..................................
I want a BB for $20. gimme
IIRC from an earlier article, these are 7000-series Blackberries. $20 is pretty much what they're worth these days. If you don't need the latest Bold/Storm/Curve 8900 shininess, the price of a BIS/data contract to bring it to full functionality will be far higher than the price of the device itself.
You'll shootcher eye out, kid!
To get that price you have to sign a 10 year contract with the republican party. Early cancellation is punishable by torture.
Sweet now all you have to do is plug them via usb as mass storage and then use recovery software to extract all the data. Unless they used the guttman method to wipe the devices. I am not sure what kind of encryption the blackberry uses though. Resourceful and creative 1337 hackers that have an interest in top secret government data should hop on this right now... Considering that the McCain campaign is computer illiterate this might be a golden opportunity.
I didn't think blackberries had hard drives. Besides that, flash has no residual traces like a hard disk platter does and guttman is useless today as data density has greatly increased. DoD 3 pass is good for most home users, and NSA 9-pass is basically flawless.
@Fieldcar:
I hate to break it to you, but while Flash storage /may/ not leave any residuals, the filesystem is a typical FAT-based one, so any 'deleted' data isn't actually 'deleted', just the FAT entry is.
See also: Digital camera memory card recovery software.
There's also a large market for shredding of old blackberries, mainly because there is no "easy" way to wipe them securely. Any company whose employees are privvy to top-secret data will have procedures in place to shred their blackberries when said employee leaves the company, or when the blackberries are upgraded. Ditto with hard drives.
@fieldcar.
Ever heard of USB mass storage?
Yeah Palin what a joke. She said she could see Russia from Alaskan shores. Yet, actually, she never said that. She's so, so stupid...yet she accomplished more on her own, without pull or contacts, than the rest of you on these boards will for 4 generations. McCain's a bum, and choosing Palin was a mistake for his campaign...but it makes me laugh to see all of you dullards mouth the slanders and lies that have been heaped upon Palin...who had the audacity to be 1. Good looking, 2. Accomplished. 3 Republican.
The irony is those who repeat the propaganda and slander thrown at her, don't realize how g*ddamned stupid you reveal yourself to be; the spooky thing is most of you simply don't care. Truth, facts - doesn't matter. What matters is that we feel good about ourselves and we get our affirmation from benevolent Government and the Media, and all our friends think just the same way! Weeee! Liberalism is a mental disorder, make no mistake about it...and smile your vapid rictus of infantile certainty...
...but we who know are smiling much wider, internally. Have your fun kiddies, an reap the desolate whirlwind you have sown.
Chill out man...
No need to strain something, this article is clearly more about the republicans utter lack of data protection
Palin? Good looking?
Really?
Relax, no one is attacking you. If you want to open minds, you should find somewhere other than the bottom of an engadget post.
@Bill
Somehow I'm thinking you probably have a magazine with and Palin interview that mysteriously has the pages stuck together. I'm also surmising that they are the ones with her photos--just a guess.
alright smart guy, you're so good at paying attention to the facts, then check this out...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nokTjEdaUGg
if she wasn't saying her proximity to russia bolstered her foreign policy experience, what exactly DOES "yes it does" mean in the context of this interview? wake up.
Wait, so your not happy that the guy you voted for actually won? Some of you guys need to cheer up?
I personally wanted McCain to win, but I accept defeat respectfully, and honorably.
Three words.... Katie Couric Interview. Anyways, this post is about the lask of security regarding digital information (just like the yahoo accounts from a while back).
@Guy ...and another no-effort, weak-sister effort on the tired 'Boy is she Stupid' motif. Another reason I stopped watching the Daily show...at least try for some original humor.
@heavydevelopment ...um yea. Clever. Say, do you write for the daily show? Engadget is hiring, you betcha!
@ Brazen521 ....yes, good looking. 40+, 4 kids - I'm guessing your mother looks much better?
@ bo sneb ...you're right, saw that interview...she didn't perform well at all...but again, she never said that she could see Russia from her house; that was Tina Fey on SNL...yet many reporters quote that all the time as if she actually said it. Not incompetence on their part, but actual malice. And bo, try a little reading comprehension...choosing her was a poor descision, as I've said and I did not in fact vote for McLame....but hey, show the the hundreds of videos where the media asked the Democratic PRESIDENTIAL candidate just how much foreign experience he has...you won't find many, if any. Hmmmm....hammering the VP candidate on an irrelevant question that is somehow never asked to Pres. Elect Obama, the Media G*d-King? Bo, tell me, do you really not see any bias?
@ fieldcar ...I did not vote for McLame...and you're saying tolerating lies and slander because you voted for McLame and he lost, is honorable and respectful? Wow...no wonder the Republicans are in danger of becoming extinct.
@Matt ...no Matt, this post is yet another lame zero-effort dig at Palin, whom we all know is an ignorant hick...we all know that right? Sure we do!
quebequois prankster: hello, this is president sarkozy!
palin: hi mr. presdent, how nice of you to call!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsmIJuN225M
sarah palin being dumber than bill
Of course, if Liberalism is a mental disorder, then Conservatism is too. The sanest approach is Moderat..ism(?) with ever-so-slight leeeeeanings in one direction or another.
In her Sept. 11 interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson, Sarah Palin had this to say about Russia: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Check out http://www.slate.com/id/2200155/ for fun facts about this veracity of this statement.
Ha, I can't believe I got voted down for advocating moderate politics. Seriously, though, people should try to avoid following ideological polarity; keep an open mind about competing viewpoints.
well you know it wasn't McCain's!
To: Sarah Pallin
From: Ralph Nader
Subject:
sell these blackberries to me, i wont care unless its Sarah Palin's pictures inside
Apparently John McCain was computer literate..eh, may be I should say technology-aware........ This would have make him a better candidate... only if he had waved his BB during one of the campaign stops.... :-)
I would pay BIG money for that BB...can you imagine all the bathroom reading material that would be in there?
Exchange based blackberries can be remote wiped. Some staffer screwed up but this guy had better write down what he wants to keep before someone hits the big red panic button.
i.c. weiner - the only weiner you see is in your mouth - you imbecile. It takes peopl like yourself to believe that these are messages from the senator and governor - your boy is in - you can have him, he is seeing day to day what is realling going on in the world, something you liberals have no idea. Why do you think he is swicthing ears so suddenly - I am sure he thinks, "I would have voted Republican myself if I would have listened."
ha! i need reading comprehension? i refuted one of your points. and then you go off on some insulting tirade about how i didn't understand your point about media bias against palin, but the truth is i just don't care about your main point. you come off as a confrontational condescending wanker, so in the end no one reaaaallly cares what you say. congrats.
Palin sure is stupid. Lile when she said, "When the stock market crashed Franklin Roosevelt got on television..."
Oh. wait...
"Palin sure is stupid. Lile when she said, "When the stock market crashed Franklin Roosevelt got on television...""
uh... that was biden...
...
(for the record)
ay caramba... you sure didnt get his sarcasm and with his 'oh wait' i thought it was obvious. you sure failed this time.
This is the best "hijacked cell phone" related story ever. Way better than that staged Paris Hilton B.S.
A washed up politician's addresbook? Really? That you find so interesting? Good for a few jokes the next day and that's it IMHO.
dude, if the contacts are still on those phones, there's a solid chance that all the data is too. There could be a heap of embarrassing/hilarious/disasterous information that could go public I find that awesome, even if we never get to hear about it.
Screw the top secret emails and full address book, I want the Crackberry with Palin's naughty MMS....
Why? Seriously, of all the women in the world you want her SMS's? Now after she's a nobody again too, makes no sense to me but to each his own I guess.
Messages or it didn't happen.
Can you say lawsuit? Doesn't matter if they sold the devices or not. If they try and pub the information found on them....hehe. Lawsuit city.
wow the amount of leftists in this blog is unbelievable. most of them probably can't even grasp and imagine the concept that it is the Republican Party that promotes technological advancement in the United States.
- Keeping health care privatized is what create innovation and better medicine because it is profitable to do so. Why would anyone want to invent the cure for cancer or anything if it's not gonna make them rich?
- Pentagon Budget is the no.1 hallmark of USA, hence most of the innovative technology trickles down to the civilian world.
- Unionization is just pure cancer, auto industry prooves it. I love American cars, but out of spite for unions I will go German
But seriously, I am truly glad John McCain lost, because he is even a bigger socialist than Bush's 2nd term. If John McCain won, it would be a sad day for the Republican party. I would be sad though if Palin lost the Presidency.
Yah Republicans promote tech. I guess that is what the infrastructure implemented by Gore in the white house was virtually unused by Shrub and his staff. I guess that is why McCain and the Repub party so completely utilized mobile phones to communicate with their supporters. I guess that is why the Repubs were the first to hit up youtube with addresses. Oh wait. No they weren't.
You revisionist historians are always so amusing. Next you will tell us that Bush's reason for going into Iraq was to free the people and not WMD's. You can make up all the shit you want, but history will see through it.
LMAO... WHAT A PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT THOSE TWO WOULD HAVE MADE!!!
I try not to think about it. No really. A 24 year old single malt scotch helped after the polls closed that evening.
Where is Joe the techie when you need him?
Republicans republicans never learn. You betcha.
Blackberries for $20...I want to find a yard sale like that! No matter what is left on them.
I bet most of the messages are to and from Satan...
Probably since Jesus and God wouldn't return her e-mails or calls. I mean really. Do you think God would be caught paling around with Palin....ewwww.