CIA leak listed BlackBerry’s QNX car software as possible hack target

As BlackBerry Ltd. vies to position itself as a leader in secure automotive systems, its QNX software has turned up on a list of potential targets for the Central Intelligence Agency to hack, according to documents released by WikiLeaks.

CIA meeting notes mention QNX as one of several “potential mission areas” for the organization’s Embedded Devices Branch.

The same branch worked with U.K. spy agencies to develop tools to break into Apple iPhones, Google’s Android system and Samsung smart TVs, according to some of the 8,761 documents WikiLeaks posted Tuesday, the authenticity of which has not been confirmed.

The notes dated Oct. 23, 2014, said QNX hadn’t yet been “addressed” by the branch’s work. The documents don’t say if the CIA ever moved forward with QNX as a hacking target.

When asked to comment on the documents revealed by WikiLeaks, BlackBerry did not directly address the documents or indicate whether it had been hacked by the CIA. Instead, it emphasized its history providing secure phones to government and regulated industries and noted it continually checks software for security vulnerabilities.

“Providing the highest level of security has always been at the core of our mission,” BlackBerry spokeswoman Sarah McKinney said in an emailed statement that listed QNX’s security features, including a secure operating system, Certicom’s secure manufacturing of integrated circuits, chain of trust software verification, trusted code execution, security tool kits and certificates.

“We are the gold standard in the industry for a well-proven reason,” she wrote.

The Waterloo, Ont., company is staking its future on security, marketing itself as the safest vendor as it completes its transition to software from smartphone manufacturing. It is also increasingly focused on its QNX auto software, already used in 60 million vehicles around the world, as a growth opportunity.

It recently announced a $100-million investment into an autonomous driving research facility in Ottawa.

In an interview in Toronto last week, BlackBerry’s chief operating officer Marty Beard described automotive software as “the most complex software environment in the world” with more than 150 million lines of code.