RIM’s Official Blackberry Blog has been hacked by a group of people who feel that their involvement with the UK Metropolitan Police and Government to help stop the London rioting is wrong.
With rioting breaking out in London and other main cities, word has spread fast that those involved in the violence, mugging and looting are discussing and plotting their actions via the Blackberry-specific chat client, Blackberry Messenger. RIM (Research in Motion), the people behind Blackberry smartphones and Blackberry Messenger, have been working with the UK Met and Government to prevent further rioting being planned through their instant messaging app. Rumour has spread fast that the Blackberry Messenger service may even be blocked in the UK until rioting stops.
A group of hackers calling themselves ‘TeaMp0isoN’ feel that RIM should not be interfering with the whole thing and have taken it upon themselves to hack into the Official Blackberry Blog website and post both a statement and their logo. The statement posted reads as follows:
“This hack is a response to this statement by RIM:
“We feel for those impacted by this weekend’s riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can. As in all markets around the world Where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.”
Dear Rim;
You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment…. if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, we have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others….. if you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. don’t be a puppet..
p.s – we do not condone in innocent people being attacked in these riots nor do we condone in small businesses being looted, but we are all for the rioters that are engaging in attacks on the police and government…. and before anyone says “the blackberry employees are innocent” no they are not! They are the ones that would be assisting the police”
This is exactly what we don’t need – more fuel to the fire and another bad notch against social networking. RIM has since removed the statement and the page, but you can see a screenshot of it above.
Via: TNW