Pushing SecurID Tokens to a BlackBerry

I had to resort to this after upgrading to the leaked beta of BlackBerry OS 4.5 on my Curve the email-import method did not work. It's a perfectly legitimate method of importing a SecurID token on your handheld, and now I actually prefer it because it is significantly less problematic than emailing the seed file to yourself. For more information see the RSA BlackBerry Soft Token page.

What you need

  • RSA SecurID Token for BlackBerry Utilities (bb300_utils.zip)
  • SecurID Soft Token for BlackBerry - the app itself, if not installed (bb300.zip)
  • Your soft token seed file (.SDTID file)
  • BES 4.1.3 or newer
  • BB OS 4.2.2 or newer
  • Java Runtime Environment 1.4 or newer

If your BES' MDS Connection Service port (default is 8080) is open you do not need to run this on the BES. Mine is not, so I pushed my soft token out from my BES.

Preparing your BlackBerry

Install the SecurID 3.0 software. Launch it, accept the EULA and open the Settings. Make sure that Listen for Token is set to Yes. When the security prompt appears choose Yes to allow the application to run as a server.

Pushing out the Soft Token with PushToken

  1. Download and unzip bb300_utils.zip
  2. Make sure your .SDTID is on the same disk
  3. Open a command prompt (Start > Run > cmd)
  4. From the command prompt:
    java -classpath <path_to_bb300utils>\PushToken.jar PushToken -e<email address or pin> -h<BES address> <path to .sdtid file>
    In my case I ran:
    java -classpath bb300_utils\PushToken.jar PushToken -ecorey@mydomain.com -hlocalhost x-rimdevice-xxxxxxxx.sdtid
  5. If the .sdtid file was valid and you gave the SecurID application permission to run as a server on your BB you should see a prompt on your handheld about receiving a token.
  6. You may be prompted for a password, if so enter the password you were given with the token.
  7. If you entered the correct password you will receive notification of the token being imported. You can rename the token by choosing Manage Tokens from the menu.
  8. That's it. When you open the application you'll be prompted for your passphrase and PIN, and then be shown the generated token. One nice change between versions 2.x and 3.x of the SecurID application is that the numbers are much larger and split into two groups. Think 14 point font instead of 10.

PushToken Command Line Options

java -classpath PushToken.jar PushToken [options] file
 
Options:
-e      E-mail or device ID of BlackBerry
-h                  Address of BES host (default: localhost)
-p
                  Port on which BES is listening (default: 8080)
Examples:
java -classpath PushToken.jar PushToken -h123.45.67.89 -p8765 -ejsmith@company.com token.sdtid

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Blackberry, Software, Technology on July 11th, 2008 at 11:07am

Add Comment »  | 

Bulk delete messages on a BlackBerry

Have you ever received a slew of messages on your BlackBerry, none of which you want or need? One of my BIS accounts receives a moderate amount of spam, all of which is flagged by SpamAssassin with [SPAM] in the subject line. I've tried setting filters at BIS, but they never seem to work. Fortunately there's an easy way to quickly delete all of the offending messages at once.

Step 1 - Searching

From the Mail window open the menu and choose Search. Enter parameters that will find all of the messages you want to delete, and only the messages you want to delete. In my case it's anything with [SPAM] in the subject.

Step 2 - Search Results

Review the search results and make sure they don't contain any messages you do not want to delete. If the results do contain messages you don't want to delete you will need to refine the search parameters to exclude them.

Step 3 - Delete Prior

This is where the magic happens. Select a date heading, open the menu and choose Delete Prior. If a message is highlighted and not a date heading you will not have a Delete Prior option.

In the context of search results, Delete Prior will only delete messages that were found by the search, not everything prior to the date of the first result.

Wait, what about BES users?

No guts, no glory. Go ahead and try it.

If you're more timid, Delete Prior only removes messages from the handheld, not the desktop. I've never tested this with any of the bi-directional sync BIS email options like GMail or Yahoo, so if you're using one of those services you should test first.

Confirm that you want to delete the messages and after a moment you'll see that all of the messages have been deleted and you're free of spam, printer notices or emails from Wiskus. Let's see your iPhone do this!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Blackberry, Technology on June 24th, 2008 at 11:06am

Add Comment »  |