It seems that the folks at Silent Circle have a bit of a counterfeiting problem on their hands. It turns out that the company’s Blackphone 2 is being counterfeited and sold through unofficial channels, which was apparently done through “night runs” in which the manufacturer makes more orders than requested and sells those extra units on the black market.The company is clearly not thrilled by this and has recently issued an update to its handsets that effectively bricks any Blackphone 2 that was sold through unauthorized channels. In a statement that the company made to ArsTechnica, “Silent Circle is aware that unauthorized devices have been manufactured as Blackphones and we’re working aggressively to stop the sale of those. As we’ve counseled, it’s imperative for consumers and companies to work directly with authorized sales partners when purchasing the Blackphone 2.”
ArsTechnica also reported on how one of their readers had their phone bricked as a result of the update and when he reached out to the company, the response he got was, “Upon review of the IMEI number (xxxxxxxxxxxx) you provided, it has been determined this device is not a genuine Silent Circle Blackphone 2. This device was not sold by Silent Circle or an approved vendor of Silent Circle and, therefore, we are unable to provide any further assistance.”
According to Silent Circle, they claim that phones bought from unauthorized parties pose a risk to users. We guess it is possible that maybe unauthorized parties might have modified the phone or software in a way that could have compromised its security.
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