‘Critical’ Security Warning Issued For BlackBerry Z10

BlackBerry issued a security advisory related to the Z10 smartphone, which was launched in January after the company unveiled its all new BlackBerry 10 platform. The company’s current flagship has been seeing modest demand in the market, while some believe that it is being outsold by the BlackBerry Q10 in various markets. The ‘critical’ security advisory is related to BlackBerry Protect, a security utility for these devices. Devices that are running BlackBerry 10 version 10.0.10.261 are affected by this bug, version 10.0.9.2743 is safe, and so is the recent BlackBerry OS 10.1 update.

BlackBerry details in the advisory that Z10s running on the aforementioned firmware version have an escalation of privilege vulnerability which can be exploited by a malicious app to gain permissions in BlackBerry Protect. The hacker behind that malicious app would then be likely to gain access to the device’s password, thus being able to prevent it from being wiped, while also gaining full access to its data. The company says that this bug is not been “actively exploited” right now, but it is urged that Z10 owners and IT administrators alike should update their devices to the latest update.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, BlackBerry Q10, BlackBerry Z10