The fundamental thing about reverse engineering is that you absolutely need to know how things work in forward first.  You cannot reverse without knowing how things go forwards.  So I studied the compilation process in depth and discovered that the compilation is a three-step process.  The BlackBerry compile process is not, in actuality, something magical.  It first runs javac on a plain old .java file.  The resulting .class file is then preverified (a process by which you alter the class file in a way that you save the device JVM significant processing time).  After this, the BlackBerry compiler (rapc.jar) is executed to covert the .class file into a .cod file.  This .cod file is significantly smaller than the .class file.  It also appears to be compressed.  It is not a simple task to reverse this process.  Primarily because rapc.jar is obfuscated like a mofo and you need to spend countless hours refactoring and getting things to play well together.  But you don’t want to hear that do you?  No, instead you want to hear that I am able to reverse .cod files to the point at which I have pristine .java source code, right?  Well, yes.  I can do that.

As I often need to appease my evil personality, I did what most anyone else in my position would do.  I looked at a few programs out there to see if I can bypass their license key requirements.  The result?  Can you say “Shooting fish in a barrel”?  Ordinarily, I would take this moment to chide all the developers out there to use better protection, I am not going to do this today.  These days, any capable person with a laptop can write and sell applications for the iPhone or the BlackBerry.  Gone are the days where you see only larger software houses publishing commercial applications.  Now just about anyone can do it.  What each individual is willing to lose to piracy and the amount of effort they wish to spend on writing software protection is entirely up to them.  All I’m going to do today is say this: Everything can be reversed.  Everything.

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security that when you write an app for the BlackBerry, your code is safe; it is not.  Your commercial protections CAN and WILL be broken.  Unless you want to lose money to this problem, the only suggestion I can offer is to consider spending more effort in designing better protections.  If not, then just forget it and go about your business as you normally would.  But be aware that an increasing number of people have the means to reverse your code.  It will only be a matter of time before sites will pop up with real working keygens that you can run on your BlackBerry device.  It will be like the second coming of the PC era where good old DOS games had keygens and keygenning groups flourished.  For those interested, what would good protection consist of?

• Don’t do any calculations within your app that you can compare to.
• Consider activating your app over the internet.
• When activating your app over the internet, use SSL, and more important, VERIFY your server certificate.
• If you need to offer trials, write two separate programs: 1 less functional trial and 1 full featured version.

To sum up, make sure that you protect what is important to you.  If your application generates revenue for you, then you will want to protect it.  Spend a little extra effort on designing a better software protection framework.  To everyone those who don’t know where to start, the company I work for offers consulting on this subject.  Get in touch with me if you’re serious about it.

So what’s the deal?  It appears that Greg Evans and Ligatt are suing a number of people for “stock bashing”.  The blog post goes on to detail that a group of people have posted comments on various investor websites in the hopes of influencing the Ligatt stock price.  Apparently, they were doing this for “their own personal reasons”.  Among the people who engaged in this activity are Chris Riley, Nisha Kappor, Ben Rothke, Randolph Morris.  On the blog post, a tiny image of the document filed in courts is provided.  While the document is indeed small, it was easy to make out the case number: 10-A-06012-5.  Further, the post says that the suit was filed in the Gwinnet Courts of Georgia.  A quick run to http://www.gwinnettcourts.com and a search for the case number reveals a bit more information.

The defendants in this case are filed as John Doe 1-25 and Grey McKenzie.  The John Doe’s are presumably to indicate that the real name of the defendant is unknown.  It would be likely though, that they use aliases or a.k.a’s in the court document.

Ligatt’s retained attorney is also from Georgia – John A. Moore from The Moore Law Group LLC.  Mr. Moore represents Ligatt in most of its cases in Gwinnet Courts.

What is most interesting to me is the other cases that come up when searching the court records.  The categories include “General Civil-Other”, “Small Claims General Civil” and “Contract”.  Looking at the cases, 1 has been filed in 2008, 4 in 2009 and 2 in 2010.  The cases for 2010 include the recent one against 25 John Doe’s and Grey McKenzie and another interesting case:  One against LaKesha Wilson.  Why interesting?  LaKesha Wilson was the President & COO of Ligatt Security International and posted an investor video blog on YouTube.  Guess what? Lakesha had already filed a case of her own against Gregory D Evans for Stalking.  Search through the cases with first name Gregory and last name Evans for some more fun.

Other people Ligatt has filed cases against include: John Doe in 2008, Joseph Nemetz, Paul S Radich, John Doe, Jason Perry in 2009.

Sadly, I can’t seem to access any of the documents that are filed online.  I would need to visit the court records office physically to do so.  Also, in most of the cases, either there is an order for dismissal or cases have been dismissed.  I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot comment any further than what I see.  I guess we’ll just see where this latest case goes.  I dunno, but to me it looks like a colossal waste of the court’s time and resources in hearing these cases.  Just sayin’.

Update: If you want to contribute more information regarding the lawsuits related to Evans and Ligatt, please mail errata[at]attrition.org.  They are working on a summary.

Example Event Log Output:

guid:0x3B91E1630F0745BC time:2010/06/30 22:45:40.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.tunnel data:Clos-MagicRudyAPN.rim
guid:0x316C1626A9DDC375 time:2010/06/30 22:45:40.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.tcp data:clos
guid:0xB2EC7A712090AD8F time:2010/06/30 22:45:46.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.smsui data:UTSC
guid:0xB2EC7A712090AD8F time:2010/06/30 22:45:46.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.smsui data:UTSC
guid:0xB2EC7A712090AD8F time:2010/06/30 22:45:54.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.smsui data:UTSC
guid:0xB2EC7A712090AD8F time:2010/06/30 22:45:54.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.smsui data:UTSC
guid:0xB2EC7A712090AD8F time:2010/06/30 22:45:57.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.smsui data:UTSC
guid:0x647E5DBBC34B5549 time:2010/06/30 22:46:09.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.clock data:+CHG
guid:0xDAA64EAD4E49C5D5 time:2010/06/30 22:46:09.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:net.rim.usb.pwd data:CbCn
guid:0x5D41D4729582C2DA time:2010/06/30 22:46:09.0 severity:Always Log type:String app:RootRegister data:usbConnectionStateChange:1

sheran@devbox:~/progs$ ./beg -p -r
Connected to 20fe2f60
2010/06/30 21:07:55.0: Incoming Call from +622157939018
2010/06/30 22:29:19.0: Outgoing Call to 02114045
2010/06/30 22:30:37.0: Outgoing Call to +628119917931
2010/06/30 22:41:54.0: Outgoing Call to +6281219684934
2010/06/30 22:53:27.0: Outgoing Call to +6281219684934
sheran@devbox:~/progs$

Inner workings

So the best way to still continue to use email as a viable form of exfiltration is to make sure your exfiltration emails are deleted from the sent folder (thus not alerting the user to the fact that his emails are going elsewhere). So we could in theory pull a Folder.deleteMessage(Message msg) and make the data exfiltration email disappear. There’s still just one issue. When you send a message and call this “deleteMessage”, there is not so much time for the message to get delivered. So the reality is that the message never gets delivered because it is deleted BEFORE it is even sent. So what do we do? Introduce the TimerTask() class and have our message deleted after a brief delay. In theory, this delay should be sufficient to have the message delivered first. Thus was born the following piece of code:

final Message msg = event.getMessage();
final Folder folder = msg.getFolder();
Timer timer = new Timer();
timer.schedule(new TimerTask()
{
    public void run()
    {
        folder.deleteMessage(msg);
    }
}, 10000);

This code will give your exfiltration email about 10 seconds before deleting it from the folder.  More than enough for it to get delivered.  So how do we mitigate this?  Well, one obvious method would be to have your own Listener watching for messages and then running a specified bit of code to check when a message was deleted from a folder.  This can then serve as a basis for alerting a user that something “hinky” is going on with his email.

To read an InputStream directly to a byte array you can do something like this:

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FileConnector fconn = (FileConnector)Connector.open("testfile.txt");
InputStream inStream = fconn.openInputStream();
byte[] byteData = IOUtilities.streamToBytes(inStream);

The thing that jumps out at me regarding this patent application is the fact that RIM is certainly becoming more consumer friendly.  In the country where I reside at the moment, one thing is apparent.  BlackBerries rule.  I have seen teenage girls in malls who have their faces buried in their BlackBerry.  I have also seen the regular business user owning not one but two.  It is easily the most popular phone sold here.  While corporates praise RIM for their security, consumers will not feel the same way.  In my brief, personal experience with alleged power-users, I came away feeling like no one really understood security at all.  This will most likely multiply with regular end-users.  So, in an effort not to appear too anal, RIM seems to have decided to provide a way for a user to remember his password.  Of course the patent refers to “unique version data” and remains fairly nebulous on what it can be.  In it’s patent application, RIM states that this unique data can be a date, integer or string.  It might be that the end-user will have the ability to configure an option like “prompt me with the 3rd and 8th character of my password”.  I know the maximum limit for incorrect passwords is no more than 10.  I still think it won’t be possible to guess a password in 10 attempts.  Thus this is quite a good move in helping make the device both secure and consumer-friendly.  I expect they will roll it out in one of their next OS updates.

I started releasing commercial applications on BlackBerry App World and yesterday was the first time I used the Dynamic Licensing model.  I devised a solution based on Google App Engine and this post shows how this can be achieved and also includes sample source code for other developers in a similar situation.  Dynamic Licensing provides a mechanism for granting activation codes to user who purchase applications.  The system works like this:

App World Flow

As with almost all commercial, downloadable applications, online purchase and activation codes have become the norm.  The end-user pays for the product, downloads it and waits for an activation code to be sent to his email address.  Once he receives the code, he enters it into the app and he can begin using it.  This is straightforward if the developer sells the app on his own store that is hosted on his own server.  If he is to sell it on other stores, however, things become tricky.  Usually, well established stores like MobiHand and others have a mechanism that allows a developer to interface with their storefront for various purposes.  One of these instances is when activation codes are involved.  In cases like these, here is a quick run-down of how the purchase flow works:

1. End-user visits Online Store
2. End-user buys app from the Online Store
3. Online Store contacts the Developer Server (using an HTTP POST request) with end-user specific details
4. Developer Server generates the activation key
5. Developer Server responds to the Online Store POST request with an activation key
6. Online Store then presents this activation key to the End-user

It is the Developer’s responsibility to get his activation server up and running to ensure steps 3-5 are completed.  Sometimes this can be a painful task; especially after you’ve spent a few grueling weeks in developing your latest and greatest application.  My solution is to setup a free account on Google App Engine to host my activation server routines there.  Why bother you ask?  Here are some advantages that I can see:

1. App Engine is free and can easily be converted to a paid model (reasonably priced) based only on usage of resources
2. App Engine offers Java so its more likely to be familiar to a BlackBerry developer
3. No administrative overhead with setting up a server or maintaining it
4. It’s cool if you like to get into “Cloud Computing”
5. It’s very easy to move off Google App Engine and onto your own server when you’re ready because of the standardized modules

I’m not going to talk you through how to get an account, sign-up, etc.  Google has tons of docs and tutorials on how to do so.  I’ll assume you’ve already got your App Engine and know how to deploy apps on it.  What we’re going to create is a servlet and optionally, some classes to help us persist the incoming information to the app engine database.  If you’re using Eclipse with the Google App Engine plugin, then creating a project is simple.  On Eclipse simply click File->New->Project and then choose Web Application Project under the Google folder.  By default, a new project will be created with a servlet having the “doGet” method.  This method handles only HTTP GET requests.  You also need to create your own “doPost” method.  This is usually because stores including App World will POST the data to your URL.  What I do is just swap the doGet with doPost.

I then write my routines to handle the incoming request.  I usually capture all relevant information, extract some key parameters, use it to generate my activation key and provide a response.  For the sake of simplifying things.  Here is the code for my servlet that captures information from BlackBerry App World, generates the Activation Code and responds with that code:

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package net.zenconsult.keyserver;
 
import java.io.IOException;
 
import javax.jdo.PersistenceManager;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
 
import net.zenconsult.codec.binary.Hex;
 
 
@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class KeyServerServlet extends HttpServlet {
	public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
			throws IOException {
		// The RIM POST Format:
		// PIN=12341234&email=customeremail@email.com&product=product&version=1.2&transactionid=123&test=false
 
		String PIN = req.getParameter("PIN");
		String email = req.getParameter("email");
		String product = req.getParameter("product");
		String version = req.getParameter("version");
		String transactionId = req.getParameter("transactionid");
		String test = req.getParameter("test");
		String verify = req.getParameter("verify");
 
		//Init vlaues
		if(email == null)
		{
			email = "";
		}
		if(product == null)
		{
			product = "";
		}
		if(version == null)
		{
			version = "";	
		}
		if(transactionId == null)
		{
			transactionId = "";
		}
		if(test == null)
		{
			test = "true";
		}
 
		// I realize using String.matches is taboo, but I did it anyway.  Feel free to change it
		// Since you can also pass your own parameters, I am passing the "verify" parameter; security by obscurity, I know, 
		// but when using App Engine, your Servlet is publicly accessible, so...
 
		if((PIN.matches("\\p{XDigit}{8}")) && (verify != null) && (verify.equalsIgnoreCase("bbappworld")) )
		{
			// This is my own Key Generation Routine
			KeyGen kg = new KeyGen(PIN);
			String hexString = new String(Hex.encodeHex(kg.genKey()));
 
			String Key = hexString.toUpperCase();
			if(test.equals("false"))
			{
				PersistenceManager pm = PMF.get().getPersistenceManager();
				Entry entry = new Entry(email, product, version, transactionId);
				pm.makePersistent(entry);
				pm.close();
			}
			resp.setContentType("text/plain");
			resp.getWriter().println("key="+Key);
		}
 
 
	}
}

If you paste the code above into your Eclipse, you will run into some errors.  These are the typical ones and how they can be fixed:

1. The KeyGen Class isn’t available.  This is my own KeyGen routine for generating Activation Keys.  It takes the BlackBerry PIN as an argument and does some magic on it.  You have to write this one yourself.
2. The Hex Class isn’t available.  In my case, I wanted to work with Hex strings and convert them back and forth.  I looked up the source to the Apache Commons Codec project and copied across the source code for the Hex class and all its dependencies into my own project.  You do not need to use it, but if you do, then I advise you to look at the Apache Commons Project.
3. The PMF class is missing.  This class is used if you want to Persist or store data. The PMF class source code is standard and Google App Engine has the sample code for it here.  If you need it, I’ve attached the code later on in this post.

As far as I recall this is what you will need to address.  Now, lets move onto storing the incoming data on the database.  I store each request in a class called an Entry.  Thus, each POST request to my servlet will be checked and if it isn’t tagged as a test, then it will be stored to the database.  The Entry object is marked as persistable and this makes it easy to store in the App Engine datastore.  Here is the code for the Entry object:

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package net.zenconsult.keyserver;
 
import java.util.Date;
 
import javax.jdo.annotations.IdGeneratorStrategy;
import javax.jdo.annotations.IdentityType;
import javax.jdo.annotations.PersistenceCapable;
import javax.jdo.annotations.Persistent;
import javax.jdo.annotations.PrimaryKey;
 
import com.google.appengine.api.datastore.Key;
 
 
 
@PersistenceCapable(identityType = IdentityType.APPLICATION)
public class Entry 
{
	@PrimaryKey
    @Persistent(valueStrategy = IdGeneratorStrategy.IDENTITY)
    private Key key;
 
	@Persistent
	private String email;
 
	@Persistent
	private String product;
 
	@Persistent
	private String version;
 
	@Persistent
	private String transactionId;
 
	@Persistent
	private Date creationDate;
 
	public Entry(String email, String product, String version, String transactionId)
	{
		setEmail(email);
		setProduct(product);
		setVersion(version);
		setTransactionId(transactionId);
		setCreationDate(new Date());
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param key the key to set
	 */
	public void setKey(Key key) {
		this.key = key;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @return the key
	 */
	public Key getKey() {
		return key;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param email the email to set
	 */
	public void setEmail(String email) {
		this.email = email;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @return the email
	 */
	public String getEmail() {
		return email;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param product the product to set
	 */
	public void setProduct(String product) {
		this.product = product;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @return the product
	 */
	public String getProduct() {
		return product;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param version the version to set
	 */
	public void setVersion(String version) {
		this.version = version;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @return the version
	 */
	public String getVersion() {
		return version;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param transactionId the transactionId to set
	 */
	public void setTransactionId(String transactionId) {
		this.transactionId = transactionId;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @return the transactionId
	 */
	public String getTransactionId() {
		return transactionId;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @param creationDate the creationDate to set
	 */
	public void setCreationDate(Date creationDate) {
		this.creationDate = creationDate;
	}
 
	/**
	 * @return the creationDate
	 */
	public Date getCreationDate() {
		return creationDate;
	}
 
 
}

Once you get this up and running, you have about the simplest mechanism for working with Dynamic Licensing with not only BlackBerry App World, but other stores as well.  You can, of course, make this as grandiose as you wish; that part is left as an exercise.  I’m just giving you a point to start at.

[Call Attribute: upto 4 characters][Date or Time: upto 6 characters]

Some examples of these are:

(W) 9:58p
(W2)11:22p
(H) 01/09

You will see in example 2 above, that all 10 characters are used up.  After I figured this out, the rest was pretty straightforward.  Here is the source code to my Field called PhoneNumberListField.

import net.rim.device.api.ui.DrawStyle;
import net.rim.device.api.ui.Graphics;
import net.rim.device.api.ui.component.ListField;
import net.rim.device.api.ui.component.ObjectListField;
 
public class PhoneNumberListField extends ObjectListField
{
 
	public PhoneNumberListField()
        {
     	    super();
        }
 
	public PhoneNumberListField(long style)
        {
     	    super(style);
        }
 
        public void drawListRow(ListField listField, Graphics graphics,
        		int index, int y, int width)
        {
 
        	String tmpCol1 = (String) this.get(listField, index);
        	String col1 = tmpCol1.substring(0, (tmpCol1.length() - 10));
        	String col2 = tmpCol1.substring(tmpCol1.length()-10);
 
        	int col2Size = this.getFont().getAdvance(col2);
                int col1Size = width - col2Size;
 
        	int col1Start = 0;
        	int col2Start = (width - col2Size);
 
        	graphics.drawText(col1, col1Start, y, DrawStyle.ELLIPSIS, col1Size);
 
        	graphics.drawText(col2, col2Start, y, DrawStyle.HDEFAULT, col2Size);
 
        }
 
}

How to implement

You first create an array of Strings.  This array can contain phone numbers or a combination of First Name, Last Name together with the phone attribute like (W), (H) for Work and Home numbers respectively.  The last field will be the date or time.  I check the time of the call to see if it is older than 24 hours.  If it is, I use the date.  The format for the time is “h:mma” and for date it is “MM/dd”.  You can format these using SimpleDateFormat.

The full list of BlackBerry Attributes are represented as follows:

Home: (H)
Work: (W)
Mobile: (M)
Pager: (P)
Fax: (F)
Other: (O)
Work2: (W2)
Home2: (H2)

The attribute constants can be found in the BlackBerryContact Interface.  A typical array of mine would look like this:

String[] numList = {“Sheran Gunasekera (W) 09/09”, “Scott Mosier (M) 9:39a”,
“Kevin Smith (M)10:39p”, “+12120031337     10:04p};

Then, if I want to place this field on my MainScreen, I do this:

PhoneNumberListField numbers = new PhoneNumberListField();
numbers.setEmptyString(“*** No Calls Yet ***”, DrawStyle.HCENTER);
numbers.set(numList);
add(numbers);

This is what it looks like:

PhoneNumberListField