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Research In Motion Plugs Phishing Loophole with BlackBerry Security Patch

6:58 pm on October 1, 2009 | Category: Email, Mobile Devices, Software

Research In Motion announced yesterday that it has released a new BlackBerry patch, fixing a loophole that could be used to conduct phishing attacks.

Up until now, phishers could make a fraudulent website appear legitimate to unsuspecting users by adding hidden (“null”) characters to to the site’s security certificate. The new patch enables the BlackBerry web browser to display null characters and warn users more effectively when a potentially malicious website is encountered.

“The updated BlackBerry device software is designed to depict null characters in the BlackBerry browser dialog box that appears when the user visits a Web site with a certificate that does not match the site domain name,” Research In Motion explained in a security note. “In the updated BlackBerry device software, the BlackBerry device represents previously hidden null characters with a block, and highlights the non-matching portion of the domain name in bold.”

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