BlackBerry PlayBook security flaw emerges

There is more bad news for BlackBerry. It has now emerged that secure emails can be hacked while the PlayBook connects to the Blackberry handset.

Corporate emails, calendars and other data can be synced between a tablet and the PlayBook via Bluetooth in the company’s Bridge application.

According to Threatpost, two researchers from Intrepidus Group were able to locate and grab the authentication token sent between the two devices during Bridge connections and, as an unprivileged user, connect to the PlayBook and access the user’s email and other sensitive information.

According to them, the PlayBook’s OS puts the authentication token for the Bridge sessions in a spot that is readable by anyone who knows how to find it.

Meanwhile Threatpost reported that RIM in its statement said that the Bridge flaw will be fixed in version 2.0 of the tablet’s operating system.

“The BlackBerry PlayBook issue described at the Infiltrate security conference has been resolved with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, which is scheduled to be available as a free download to customers in February 2012. There are no known exploits, and risk is mitigated by the fact that a user would need to install and run a malicious application after initiating a BlackBerry Bridge connection with their BlackBerry smartphone.”

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