Tim Havighurst. Program Manager for Wireless Networking at NSA. 410.854.7005. tghavig@missi.ncsc.mil

Office directed to engage RIM to develope SMIME capability on 957. Prior to Tachyon.

Calling it the CryptoBerry. JavaOS on the 957 platform. Encrypted email only! Limited address book. No other synching. Software based PKI.

Wireless ugrades and SmartCard integration will be Phase 2, Tachyon.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001

Answers

I phoned Tim. Left a message for him to call about briefing DONCIO on wireless CryptoBerry.

-- Anonymous, June 04, 2002

Yesterday afternoon, Rick Therrien and I had the opportunity to meet with Howie Wheeler of Research in Motion (RIM). Howie wanted to bring us (DONCIO) up to speed with respect to some new developments in the RIM BlackBerry arena.

Several months ago, it became known that RIM and the National Security Agency (NSA) were working on a project nicknamed "CryptoBerry". The DONCIO office received a briefing on this project from Robert Nowak and Tim Havighurst of the NSA. The goal of the project was to convert an existing RIM 957 device into a more secure device which would have the ability to encrypt data at rest and also have the ability to send secure email messages (S/MIME). RIM's new 5810 operating system, based on Java 2 Micro Edition, would be loaded onto an existing RIM 957 device, along with a software based X.509 certificate. The operating system would be modified to encrypt data at rest and force digital signatures on all emails. All converted RIM 957 devices would need to have the special operating system loaded by the NSA. In addition, because of the limited amount of RAM, some normal RIM functionality would be excluded. It should be noted most RIM 957 devices have either 5MB or 6MB or RAM for Application data.

It was our conclusion the CryptoBerry project was a step in the right direction, however, sacrificing application functionality for the gained security on the old slow RIM 957 hardware was not something our user community would be willing to give up.

There are now several phases to the CryptoBerry project. Explaining these phases to us, from RIM's perspective, was the purpose of Howie's visit yesterday afternoon. The concept described above may be defined as Phase 1.

RIM is going to be releasing another 957 device with 8MB of RAM, rather that the existing 5MB or 6MB versions. The additional RAM should allow all existing application functionality to coexist with the additional NSA modifications.

Phase 2 will be similar to phase 1 with the following modifications. Both the 957 and 5810 devices will be targeted. The Department of Defense Common Access Card (CAC) will be used for data encryption and digital signatures, rather than soft tokens. Apriva will be used to make the CAC smartcard readers.

Phase 3 will target only the 5810 device (I think). RIM is planning on incorporating a removable battery / smartcard reader into the unit, rather than using a third party.

Other interesting notes. These devices will ONLY be available through NSA. Even when RIM has integrated a smartcard reader into the unit, it must be purchased via NSA. A relay to be established in the United States. This is part of the contract with the Canadian equivalent of the NSA, the NSA and RIM. If the NSA owns and operates the relay and all units must be purchased through NSA ...

RIM needs our help with the following. Get the CryptoBerry devices and the 5810 on the NMCI contract. We need to invite the NSA down to brief us on the various phases.

-- Anonymous, May 30, 2002

Richard Spinella (rspinella@apriva.com) called. Asked me for a NSA phone number. I told him I was not comfortable doing that. He asked me to call and see if NSA wanted to meet with him and Paul when they are in town the last week of October. I called Tim and he declined.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

tjhavig@missi.ncsc.mil

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Carolyn Jonhadl is the lead on this effort. She is the RIM Army/Air Force rep.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001