The things I like to look for at these events are the technologies that have the potential to disrupt the apple cart. These revolutionary movements do more than simply evolve last year’s technology. They beg the question whether whole companies or industries will radically change and shift to address this new force, and whether or not new players will emerge as drivers in this movement. At GDC this year, I could see that such a shift is starting to take place and I’m excited that BlackBerry is actively engaged in this movement. What’s the shift? We’re starting to see mobile devices provide a console gaming experience, anywhere, anytime.

We’ve been playing games on phones for many years, why talk about this now? What’s changed?

Technology Advancement

As with many disruptive forces, a number of normal evolutionary changes take place first that, by themselves, are not disruptive. However, when brought together, they can change the game considerably and challenge an entire once-stable industry. The critical technologies all on mobile devices that are beginning to put pressure on the gaming console industry are the following:

• Multitasking Operating Systems
• High Performance GPUs
• High Definition Video (HDMI)
• Wireless Mobile Game Controllers
• Portable Game Software

When all these technology advancement come together in a smartphone, you have something very close to a game console in the palm of your hand. Each of these plays a vital role. Let’s explore the contribution of each.

Multitasking Operating Systems

A true multitasking operating system is critical for providing smooth performance and interactivity for today’s most demanding games. Not only must the OS manage the game itself, but it must also juggle location information, gyro, accelerometer and other sensors, concurrent voice or VOIP for trash-talking your friends during gameplay, and interact with the cloud and social networks for storing and sharing your results. Neither iOS nor Android has a great multitasking solution here. In contrast however, BlackBerry 10, powered by QNX Neutrino (a leading world class RTOS), is very well positioned to provide all the power necessary for managing the ever-increasing demand of concurrent functionality in the next generation of mobile games.

High Performance GPUs

GPUs render the images. Without them, our game visuals would be slow, blocky, and flat. There’s no question how important these processors are. Over the last couple of years, the advancements made by companies like ARM, Imagination, NVidia, and Qualcomm for smartphones have been enormous. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between a game rendered by a GPU on a laptop vs. a game rendered by a smartphone GPU. Perhaps the most obvious difference has been the physical screen size. However, when you add a multitasking OS and a high performance GPU to HD Video (the next critical technology), things start to get really interesting.

High Definition Video (HDMI)

One of the things we did in the BlackBerry booth this year at GDC was connect a bunch of our BlackBerry Z10 smartphones (using the standard HDMI port) to large HD monitors. We also did this at our interactive pods in the Unity and Marmalade booths. I can’t tell you how many times people walked up and asked questions like, “Since when did BlackBerry start making game consoles?” When we told them they were looking at a game being rendered and played on the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone they had that mind blown look on their face.

In the picture above, a young gamer is playing “Shadow Gun” on a BlackBerry Z10. This is a great First Person Shooter game built on the Unity3D game engine. You can just see the Z10 on the table in front of him below the monitor. What you can’t see in this picture is the awesome SteelSeries Free game controller he’s using to play the game. That piece of critical technology is next on my list.

Wireless Mobile Game Controllers

To an awesome multitasking OS, killer GPU, and HDMI out, you add a wireless game controller and you’ve just about got the whole package. Using a controller accomplishes two important things: First, it gets your fingers off the valuable screen real estate freeing up more pixes for game play. The other benefit of the controller is that it adds that real, immersive game feeling you get with console controllers. The controllers we used at GDC are the SteelSeries Free Mobile Wireless Controllers (shown below). The last time I checked, the controller will set you back about $80USD and you can find one here. Other controllers, such as the Wii Remote and the Gametel, are also usable and there’s more to come.

For you game developers out there, you can get more information about how to instrument your code to work with these controllers including samples and tutorials by checking out Sean Paul Taylor’s devblog: “Adding Gamepad Support to Your BlackBerry 10 Game”. You can also read about Ramprasad Madhavan’s experience at GDC this year and the Unity BlackBerry 10 Open Beta coming soon on his devblog: “Unity and BlackBerry Gaming at GDC 2013”

Portable Game Engines & Frameworks

The final critical technology contributing to the end of the game console industry as we know it is portable game engines and frameworks. The easier it is to get your game ported from one platform to another, the harder it is for games to be locked to a single console or device. Companies like Marmalade, ShiVa3D, and Unity3D/Union all contribute here. As a developer, you want the highest quality game experience you can get with the largest distribution possible. This is exactly what these frameworks offer and each has been tuned to deliver a killer experience on BlackBerry 10.

Summary

I confess I own an Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and a PlayStation 3. However, I more often find myself connecting my Z10 to my 46” flat screen, the audio-out to my surround system, and kick back on the couch with my SteelSeries Free remote to enjoy a great game of Angry Bots or Critical Wave. There’s no question that smartphones like the BlackBerry Z10 are providing near console game experiences. This is being driven by advancements in 5 areas: real multitasking OS’s, high performance mobile GPUs, HD Video, mobile game controllers, and portable frameworks.

Consoles will need to adapt and add value to remain competitive. Where does that leave game consoles in the future then? Are they becoming extinct? Will smartphones replace game consoles outright? Will consoles evolve into something even better? Or, will they become the mobile extension of their stationary counterparts? As the great Yoda once said, “Always in motion the future is”.

There was one place, however, where 3D made business sense: gaming (well, native gaming). 3D enjoyed, and still enjoys, a happy existence on PC and Console platforms. The question I always wondered was when will 3D in the browser be of high enough performance and quality across all platforms and browsers to support a solid business case for 3D on the Web? I believe the time has finally come. The confluence of mobile gaming, mobile Web app development, and a solid javascript API called WebGL (a biding to the powerful and ubiquitous OpenGL), is fueling its arrival. I’m proud to say that BlackBerry has been very active in providing one of the first complete mobile WebGL implementations on the BlackBerry PlayBook, and has also brought this capability to BlackBerry 10.

WebGL provides developers with the ability to write immersive, high-performance, console-quality, 2D and 3D games accessible directly on your BlackBerry 10 smartphone. This could be done directly though the browser, or even better, directly by a BlackBerry HTML5/WebWorks application. By building and packaging your HTML5 application into a bar file (a BlackBerry app file container), it enjoys the same rights and privileges as a native application. These apps look, feel, and behave as native apps, as they don’t run inside a browser context. They don’t need to be online to work, and they can leverage great BlackBerry services like the Payment Services SDK and the BBM APIs. BlackBerry WebWorks apps can also be certified as Built for BlackBerry affording them additional advantages.

The game shown below is called “Pearl Boy” and is a great example of what a WebGL application can do. It was developed by Goo Technologies, makers of the Goo Engine for GDC this year. It’s a 100% Web application, written using HTML5, Javascript, and of course, WebGL. The graphics and performance on the BlackBerry Z10 look great. Reflections, environment maps, pixel shaders, they’re all there. WebGL is the real deal.

If you want to learn more about programming with WebGL on BlackBerry, check out these additional WebGL resources on the BlackBerry DevBlog. I also recommend you check out the O’Reilly book, “WebGL: Up and Running” by Toni Parisi.

It’s true that learning a new platform can take months. Luckily, those standard rules of learning time don’t apply in certain cases – and that often happens to be true for BlackBerry 10. I’ll explain what I mean later.

First, let me share with you some data from our Port-a-thons. In our “Got Game Port-a-thon”, we had over 4,000 gaming apps ported by developers to BlackBerry 10 from other platforms in 36 hours. A few weeks later, we ran another port-a-thon and had 15,000 apps ported. Only a week later, an additional 19,000 apps were ported in the 36 hour window (recap of port-a-thons here). So, you might be thinking, “How could this happen if it takes 3-6 months to learn a new platform?” The reason is simple: Developers don’t have to learn a new set of skills to get their app running on BlackBerry 10. We received games and apps written in all four of the runtimes BlackBerry 10 supports: Native C and C++, HTML5, Adobe AIR, and Android Java. Here’s why it was so easy in each of these cases:

Native C and C++ Apps

Our native platform is Posix-compliant C and C++, and supports a lot of libraries and gaming engines leveraged by game developers including Unity3D, Marmalade, Appcelerator, Shiva3D, NME, OpenGL ES, OpenAL, Cocos2D-X, Box2D, Skia, Lua, and so on. (Learn more about all the native library support options here.) For many developers, the majority of time spent porting their app to BlackBerry 10 was just setting up their tooling and getting their signing keys.

Now, if your app is full of custom, platform-specific APIs or if your app uses a lot of device specific UI, then of course it will take you longer than a day to port your app. But learning Cascades, the UI framework for native development on BlackBerry 10, doesn’t take very long – especially if you’re familiar with Qt and QML. What we’re finding is that most mobile developers today are designing their apps with portability in mind at the outset. They’re separating out platform specific stuff from the common stuff. Or, they’re leveraging a framework like Marmalade that does a lot of this platform abstraction work for them under their APIs. What’s left is pretty easy to port because you have a solid, standards-compliant platform like BlackBerry 10 on which to develop. Things just work.

Android Apps

One misconception I hear a lot is that the BlackBerry Android runtime is an “emulator”. This isn’t the case. Our Android runtime is a pure port of the open source Dalvik VM directly onto QNX. Other mobile vendors ported the same code to Linux, whereas we went straight to QNX – a real-time embedded OS about 1% the size of standard Linux and highly efficient. We don’t touch the byte codes or modify the programs in any way – all we do is re-package them into a different archive format that helps us maintain security for your protection. Either your app runs or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, our tools will tell you why immediately and you can decide if it’s something you can work around. You can even check out your app using our online tool.

We don’t support apps that use proprietary Google APIs, and we don’t support native extensions. Also, for security reasons, BlackBerry 10 does not allow Android Java apps to run in the Enterprise partition; they may only run in the Personal partition (learn more about BlackBerry Balance). Visit our Android developer site for more info about the limitations of Android apps on BlackBerry. “Porting” Android apps to BlackBerry 10 is trivial. I regularly do this in less than 60 seconds per app – no lie. It literally takes me longer to copy someone’s apk from a USB drive than it does to port it.

HTML5 Apps

BlackBerry 10 has maintained one of the highest HTML5 conformance scores in the industry for many months (see http://html5test.com/). BlackBerry 10 is not only first in the mobile rankings – it outscores all desktop browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, and it also outscores iPhone, iPad, Android, Firefox Mobile, Opera, etc. So, if you have a web app with all that silly Java or Objective-C wrapper business that Android and iOS make you put in there, you just have to strip that out all that nonsense and re-package for BlackBerry. Web apps on BlackBerry are first-class citizens on our platform; they have sensor APIs, payment capabilities and access to device camera, and they don’t need or require an Internet connection to run.

BlackBerry 10 also supports things like WebGL and WebSockets –functionality not found in many other mobile platforms. Check out all the API support for augmenting HTML5 on BlackBerry here. We also support the leading web frameworks like jQuery, Sencha, dojo, and of course Apache Cordova. For the same reasons that native C and C++ apps “port” very quickly to BlackBerry 10, so do HTML5 apps. The standards support is there. The frameworks are there.

Adobe AIR Apps

AIR is AIR; they just work. You can learn more about how to get your Adobe AIR apps on BlackBerry 10 here.

Summary

Hopefully, the question about whether you can “port” an app in a very short amount of time to BlackBerry 10 should be clear now. Through BlackBerry 10’s adherence to industry standards – and by developers’ common practice of architecting for cross platform deployment – mobile apps are, and have been, easily ported to BlackBerry 10. For more information, check out our new developer site: http://developer.blackberry.com

The majority of security problems in app development are really software quality problems. There’s something wrong with the way the code was written that leaves a door open for someone to exploit. Fortunately, many of these problems can be easily fixed. Some of these can be fixed in the design phase of product development and others in the code phase. We’ll explore a few examples of each type in this post.

The Objective of this Post

Now, before we jump in, I need to confess that this is a broad and deep subject. My goal here is to present a high-level understanding of code security through discussion and a few examples that will help you understand the kinds of vulnerabilities that can lead to problems. I will also provide references to further reading for those that really want the “Full Monty” on developing secure apps.

Code Security at Design Time

1. Design with security in mind. This is perhaps the most important thing you can do. Think about the following questions before you design your code and have answers for all of them:
   • What Assets does this software need to protect? Credit Card numbers, user data, contact lists, account info, access to paid services, and privileged access to device. To protect sensitive assets, you need to plan how you’re going to deal with the data at design time. If you’re sending sensitive data over a computer network, you should use SSL/TLS protocol to prevent attackers from eavesdropping. Look into OpenSSL for open source libraries and code examples on how to use this protocol. Also, for server-side storage, consider using a 3rd party database such as MySQL. These systems have their own built-in security policies that you can leverage. Also, for secure authentication, leverage trusted services like OAuth and OpenID (See Additional Resources for more info below)
   • How might an attacker exploit my code? This is often called “Thread Modeling”. Attackers might be eavesdropping on the network ports you use, or providing unexpected inputs that overflow memory buffers and inject attacker-supplied code to be executed. You have to ensure, for example, that you never execute code on behalf of an untrusted user
2. Follow a Secure Coding Standard – Select a secure coding standard and make sure your code conforms. A secure coding standard will identify specific issues with a particular programming language that a compiler or analysis tool might fail to diagnose. Secure coding standards also define requirements for producing code level security in your system. Several popular secure coding standards are available from CERT® on their website at www.securecoding.cert.org.
3. Perform Design Reviews. This is a simple thing teams can do, and it can really pay off in the long run. A few years ago, I managed a couple of engineering teams at Sun and when a new code module was planned. The engineering lead would present the design to a team of Senior Architects with different backgrounds (JVM, networking, platform architecture, etc.). This always uncovered potential problems –and did so early on before they became big problems that were expensive to fix.
4. Understand Emerging Threats. Pay attention to the type of exploits that are popular, and make sure you’re not helping the bad guys. Designate one person on your team to stay up to date on the current security trends and put her/him in the code review. A great place to start is by visiting the CERT website frequently and becoming familiar with all the resources they offer. In addition, all major platform and OS providers publish security updates from time to time as issues are uncovered.
5. Use Static Analysis Tools. Static code analysis can really help locate many kinds of software validation and reliability problems, including many memory problems. Some examples of companies that provide these products include: Klocwork and Coverity, Parasoft, and Vericode. A more complete list can be found here: http://www.cert.org/secure-coding/tools.html

If you’re doing all these things, you’re actually doing pretty well. You’ve got a solid design, you’re following a secure coding standard, you’ve got someone keeping an eye out for potential security exploits, and you’re conducting design reviews and running static analysis tools on a regular basis. You’ve got the design side covered pretty well. Now let’s look at some specific code issues that can cause problems.

Code Security at Development Time

Most of the following examples demonstrate some of common problems found in native C and C++ development. Web developers and Java developers can still benefit as the concepts behind the problems are valid in many languages. In the Additional Resources section below, I provide links to specific Web and Java resources for code security.

1. Application Frameworks

   Use application frameworks whenever possible. Frameworks hide a lot of the nasty memory management and secure network connection issues from the developer and reduce the possibility of making simple, but costly, mistakes. Fortunately, the BlackBerry platform supports a lot of great developer frameworks, both from BlackBerry (such as the Invocation and Share Framework, and the UI Framework Cascades) and through BlackBerry’s Platform Partners.

2. Memory Management

   Aside from the obvious allocation of memory insufficient for the data you’re writing into it, there’s a common issue people new to C and C++ sometimes experience regarding memory management. The problem occurs when you confuse which action you use to release the memory you’ve allocated.

   Using Cascades will reduce the likelihood of memory management problems because it hides all the messy details for you within the framework. However, if you must allocate memory yourself for your app, keep the following tip in mind.

   There are two main C functions for allocating memory: malloc() and calloc(). Use malloc() when you don’t care about initializing the data in memory. Use calloc() if you want to initialize the memory to 0. The important thing to remember is when using either malloc() or calloc(), you must use the function free() to release the memory and give it back to the system.

   In contrast, when using the C++ method new() to create a new object, you must use the corresponding delete() method. Nothing good can happen when you call free() on memory you’ve created using new().

3. Function Safety

   The QNX platform provides a number of preferred C functions that are safer to use than the more commonly known standard functions. A subset of these is shown in the table below. You can find the complete list in the BlackBerry Native SDK online docs (referenced in Additional Resources section below).

   As with memory management, using an application framework helps with function safety as well. For instance, the Cascades classes such as QString and QByteArray protect you from many of these problems as well.

   As you’ll see in these examples, most of the serious problems occur when buffers you’re reading into or writing out to are not large enough to take the data. These functions below help you from over-writing some of the time. You should always perform bounds checking if you want to be on the safe side.

   Unsafe Function(s)	Preferred Function(s)	Comments
   strcpy() and strncpy() strcat() and strncat()	strlcpy() and strlcat()	The function strlcpy() copies strings and the function strlcat() concatenates strings. They’re designed to be safer, more consistent, and less error-prone replacements for strncpy() and strncat(). Unlike those functions, strlcpy() and strlcat() take the full size of the buffer (not just the length) and guarantee to NUL-terminate the result (as long as the size is larger than 0 or, in the case of strlcat(), as long as there’s at least one byte free in the destination string). There also exist “wide” versions of these functions that are equally dangerous: wcscpy(), but there is no “l” safe version to use, only wcsncpy() which does not necessarily NUL-terminate the output. Care must be taken to ensure the output buffer is NUL-terminated.
   sprintf() and vsprintf()	snprintf() and vsnprintf()	The snprintf() function is similar to fprintf(), except that snprintf() places the generated output (up to the specified maximum number of characters) into the character array pointed to by buf, instead of writing it to a file. The snprintf() function is similar to sprintf(), but with boundary checking. A null character is placed at the end of the generated character string.
   gets()	fgets(buf, n, fp)	The fgets() function reads a string of characters from the stream specified by fp, and stores them in the array specified by buf, limited to size n.
   getwd()	getcwd(buffer, size)	The getcwd() function returns the name of the current working directory. buffer is a pointer to a buffer of at least size bytes where the NUL-terminated name of the current working directory will be placed. The maximum size that might be required for buffer is PATH_MAX + 1 bytes

4. Structures

   Structures in C and C++ are aggregated types that define and contain other data elements within them. The elements of a structure cannot be re-ordered by the compiler. Modern compilers do use a variety of methods to minimize the security risk of stack-buffer overflows such as stack canaries, address-space layout randomization, re-ordering the local variables within a function, among other things. However, since the compiler can’t re-order the elements within your structures, the possibility of a buffer overflow on one of your elements affecting function parameters or local variables remains. Consider the following example:

   struct _JOB {
               char name[64];
                           char title[64];
               DATE startdate;
               DATE enddate;
               WAGE salary;      
           } JOB, *PJOB;

   The buffers name and title can both overrun. Since they’re placed on the stack first, the elements defined after them in the structure and on the stack itself can be affected. For this reason, care should be given when defining the elements in a structure. The next example shows a structure that’s defensively designed:

   struct _JOB {
               DATE startdate;
               DATE enddate;
               WAGE salary;  
               char name[64];    // Buffers placed at end 
                           char title[64];   // of struct definition
   
           } JOB, *PJOB;

   Recommendations for using structures

   When dealing with structures that contain fixed-width buffers or arrays designed to receive data that’s controlled or influenced by a user:

   • Buffers and arrays in structures should be grouped at the end of the structure
   • Local variables declared as structures should be declared after local buffers but before any other local variables
   • Global variables declared as structures should be declared before any global buffers and arrays and after any other global variables
   • Pointers to structures do not need any special consideration
   • Where practical, try to minimize the number of local variables cast as structures with buffers and arrays as elements

5. Macros

   Macros are one of my favorite mechanisms in C and C++. I love using them; however, you have to be very careful as they can get you into trouble. Macros are defined through the use of the #define preprocessor directive and when processed, literally expand in your source code prior to compilation. If IDE’s could show you what the processed source code looked like (maybe some do?), then I suspect we’d see fewer problems. Consider the following example that demonstrates the issue:

   #define CUBE (x*x*x)
   …
   int x = CUBE (5-2)

   In this example, you might expect that you’re going to get the cube of 3 which is 27. However, when the preprocessor expands the macro, normal operator precedence rules apply. So, here’s how that the value of x will be calculated:

   CUBE(5-2) = (5 – 2*5 – 2*5 – 2)
   CUBE(5-2) = (5 – 10 -10 -2)
   CUBE(5-2) = -17

   Therefore, to protect against this problem, the macro can easily be defined using parentheses as in:

   #define CUBE(x)   (x)*(x)*(x)

   In this example, we’ve seen how operator precedence rules can get you into trouble with macros. There are other problems such as the importance of white space when defining macros, using macros in if statements, and self-referencing macros to name a few. Provided you think about how the macro will expand in your source and you consider how the arguments you pass to macros will be interpreted in that expansion, you should be fine.

6. Integers (signed, unsigned) and Enumerations

   Another common problem that can expose serious threats to your code involves integer overflow or underflow. This can happen when care is not taken with integers. The following code fragment demonstrates how serious this problem can be (recall our discussion about buffer sizes above):

   int buffLen = 0;
   printf(“[buf] %d %u\n”, buffLen, buffLen);
   buffLen = -1;
   printf(“[buf] %d %u\n”, bufflen, bufflen);

   Executing this code gives:

   [buf] 0 0
   [buf] -1 4294967295

   In this example, I forced the value of bufLen to be -1 for demonstration purposes. But, it’s easy to imagine a simple arithmetic error in a length calculation to be off by one.

   Similar problems arise with the use of Enumerations. Not all compilers use the same kind of “int” for Enumerated types. So, you need to be careful when using Enumerations. Make sure you know how your compiler treats them. If your compiler uses signed integers by default (such as Microsoft Visual C++ and ARMCC), it’s not possible to create an unsigned enumeration as the value will be overflow the signed int (for example, you can’t set the enumerated value to be 0xffffffff).

Summary

Though we’ve just scratched the surface of this topic, we’ve discussed a number of things developers can do to protect their code from security problems.

We’ve explored good practices developers can adopt at design time, such as:

• Design with security in mind
• Follow a Secure Coding Standard
• Perform Design Reviews
• Understand Emerging Threats
• Use Static Analysis Tools

We’ve also looked at some common coding mistakes that can lead to security problems and discussed how the code can be fixed to avoid these problems. We’ve seen how leveraging Application Frameworks (like Cascades) can greatly reduce security problems. As an app developer, you have a responsibility to protect your user’s identity and sensitive data as best you can from attackers seeking to exploit it. The content in this blog post should help you get started with some good practices and links to learn more.

For more information on application security, additional examples, and deeper analysis, please refer to the additional resources below.

Additional Resources

• BlackBerry Native SDK Online Docs. Security Considerations for Native Application Development
• QNX Online Docs, Neutrino C Library Reference
• Chad Tetreault, Say It Aint S’OAuth, in BlackBerry Dev

Blogs

• Software Engineering Institute | Carnegie Mellon http://www.sei.cmu.edu/
• Seacord, Robert. The CERT C Secure Coding Standard, Addison Wesley, 2008
• Seacord, Robert. Secure Coding in C and C++, 2nd Edition, Addison Wesley, 2013.
• Mark Dowd, John McDonald, Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Robert Seacord for taking the time to read an early draft of my blog and provide helpful feedback. Robert is a senior analyst in the CERT Program at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in Pittsburgh, PA where he leads the Secure Coding Initiative and is author of a number of books on Secure Programming. I’d also like to thank the BlackBerry Security team for their insightful comments and suggestions.

This is the first post in a two part series about security. In this post, I tackle the issue of responsibility. In Part II, we’ll explore some things that developers need to know to help them write secure apps.

I sat on a panel recently at Sprint’s Open Solutions Conference in San Jose titled “Consumer Application Security for Developers”. Sexy topics like application security rarely pack a session hall at any conference and this was no exception. However, the attendance was much higher than I expected (about 30 people) and the discussion was very lively and interactive. It was immediately clear to me that developers – perhaps as consumers themselves – are thinking more about security than they had in the past. This is a good thing.

Whose Problem is Security?

One of the first questions that came up in the panel was: “Whose problem is security?” Our moderator suggested a number of potential “owners” for this problem and posed the question to his panel. Is it the carrier’s problem? How about the Handset OEM? The OS? Your employer’s IT admin? The app developer? The consumer? As you can see, there are a lot of parties to point fingers at when something goes awry.

I couldn’t help but jump on this one first. The answer is obvious: Security is everyone’s responsibility. Each player in the mobile device value chain is responsible for providing a secure environment over the part they control. At its most fundamental level, security is about protecting valuable assets from those who seek to steal or exploit them. You wouldn’t leave your house in the morning without locking the door, right? Even greater diligence is required in the digital world because the value can be greater, and the thieves are invisible.

Security is everyone’s responsibility

The Carrier: The carrier is responsible for providing a network that is secure from being attacked, snooped, or otherwise compromised. As carriers reduce their investments in their own app catalogs, their responsibility with app security lessens but responsibility for cellular and data network integrity remains.

The Device: The device’s operating system (OS) is at the center of security. The OS’s responsibility is to provide a secure environment for all applications, services, data storage, and network connectivity. The OS is responsible for handling permissions and defending against viruses and malware. Attackers primarily seek to exploit weaknesses in the OS or in its core applications such as web browsers. This is why it’s so important to design security into the OS when it’s being architected and built. Platform providers that offer App Stores have an additional responsibility to ensure that the apps it stocks in its store are safe from malware and abuse like piracy. It should be no surprise to anyone that RIM takes the issues of security very seriously.

The IT Administrator: The number one responsibility of IT at any high-tech company is protecting the company’s Intellectual Property (IP) –it’s like the crown jewels of the company’s value. In a world where IT administrators directly managed the mobile devices that had access to the company’s jewels, their ability to protect them was pretty clear. However, with today’s BYOD trend, their ability to protect the company’s assets and IP has become less clear. Only RIM has addressed this uncertainty and given control back to IT administrators and CIOs with its BlackBerry Mobile Fusion (IT’s MDM Portal) and BlackBerry Balance (the client side partitioning; controlled by a simple gesture). With these products and services, IT administrators can enforce corporate security policies and manage remote devices with confidence.

The App Developer: App developers have a responsibility too. It’s their job to build an application that can’t be exploited by attackers and protects sensitive information that the user provides. Strong operating systems provide many mechanisms for app developers to ensure their app isn’t the “unlocked window” that gains access to someone’s identity or bank account. App developers need to think about security as an end-to-end problem. This includes making secure network connections, encrypting local data on the device, and ensuring servers with sensitive customer data are adequately protected from attack.

The Consumer: Consumers need to be mindful as well. Use device passwords (and not “1234”) and, perhaps most important of all, be suspicious of applications asking for permissions to access files, social networks, and your contact list. RIM offers a great product for consumers called BlackBerry Protect that helps keep the information on your device backed up and secure should your device get lost or stolen. BlackBerry Protect also allows you to wipe all the data off your device remotely as well as display an alert message on the home screen should you lose your BlackBerry device.

Why is BlackBerry 10 so secure?

BlackBerry 10, RIM’s upcoming mobile computing platform, is built on QNX’s Real-Time Operating System. Sebastien Marineau, VP of OS Platforms at RIM, wrote a great article recently titled “How BlackBerry 10 avoids Android’s Security Issues”. In the article, Sebastien notes that the QNX RTOS has approximately 100,000 lines of code whereas a standard Linux implementation is around 14 million lines of code. QNX is 1% the size of Linux. When it comes to security, the fewer places where bugs and security exploits can hide, the better! Because QNX is so tight, and because it’s been designed with security in mind from day 1, it’s extremely hard to break in.

In addition, BlackBerry 10 includes BlackBerry Balance: a new, unique, and innovative capability that allows consumers to enjoy the full range of both a personal mobile device and a secure, encrypted work device without compromising on either one. No other mobile device can do this. With one simple gesture, the user can switch the device from “Personal” mode (wide open with all their apps, music, media, etc.) to “Work” mode (fully secure as if on your work’s VPN). Using BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, IT administrators can manage their company’s devices remotely and securely (including Android and iOS devices!).

In this blog post, we explored the responsibility of security — who owns what piece and why it’s so important. My next post on this topic, titled “Application Security Part II: What Should App Developers Do?” will explore different things developers can do to make sure they’re writing solid, high quality, secure mobile applications.