I promised you all that I’d publish an amusing story about the RIM Porsche 911 at Mobile World Congress last week. For those who don’t know about the background, RIM purchased QNX in 2010 who just happen to also do the embedded software for Porsche and others. There is a video explaining all that stuff below:

I was very impressed by this demo by the way. The coolest part is the live map of the Nurburgring giving you the right braking points because of the GPS link-up (if anyone is reading this from Porsche or RIM I would love to take it round the Ring by the way!).

Anyway, so I was standing there, the Porsche was sitting there unattended as was the Blackberry handset that was part of the demo. I can tell you that the password for the Blackberry was not “porsche” ;-). I opened up the glove box and had a quick look inside only to be presented with a Cradlepoint WiFi router filling the entirety of the space inside:

RIM Porsche glove box

Staring at me from the top of the router was a white label on the top. I’ve enhanced this in the picture below so you can see it properly. Yes, that’s right, they had a label with a default password (a reasonably weak one too) stuck to the top of the router! 🙂 Obviously I’ve blanked out the actual password in the pics:

Default password anyone?

Now I just want to say here that if anyone from RIM is reading this, please do not crank this up as a security incident or go mental at the QNX guys, this is just an amusing story. After all, it’s a demo and chances are the default password was not being used, someone had probably changed it.

Security is only as good as its weakest link

However, here is the serious bit – with all the convergence of mobile tech and the emergence of connected homes, cars and cities, it just goes to show that security is often only as good as its weakest link. That may not be the mobile technology itself, just something it’s connected to. Oh yes, another security message here – don’t leave phones unattended on trade show stands and always lock your glove box!