Hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other wrongdoers remain in custody today after police in Europe infiltrated an encrypted chat system apparently used by thousands to talk about prohibited operations. The overall failure of this ostensibly secure technique of communication will likely have a chilling effect on the shadowy industry of crime-focused tech.
” Operation Venetic” was reported by different police agencies, major regional news outlets, and by Motherboard in particularly lively kind, pricing estimate extensively individuals apparently from within the groups impacted.
The operation included numerous officers working across many firms in France, the Netherlands, the U.K., and other nations. It started in 2017, and culminated 2 months ago when a service called EncroChat was hacked and the messages of 10s of countless users exposed to police analysis.
EncroChat is a step up in some ways from encrypted chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Rather like Blackberry once did, EncroChat provided tailored hardware, a devoted OS, and its own servers to users, offering a pricey service costing thousands per year instead of a one-time purchase or download.
Messages on the service were allegedly really protected and had actually deniability integrated in by letting discussions be modified later on– so in theory a user might claim after the fact they never said something. Motherboard’s Joseph Cox has been following the business for a long time and has much more information on its claims and operations.
Image Credits: EncroChat/
Needless to state those claims were not completely true, as eventually in early 2020 cops managed to present malware into the EncroChat system that completely exposed the discussions and images of its users. Since of the relied on nature of the app, people would honestly talk about drug offers, murders, and other criminal activities, making them sitting ducks for police.
Throughout the spring criminal operations were being cracked open with alarming (to them) regularity, but it wasn’t until May that users and EncroChat managed to put the pieces together.
Arrests throughout the several countries included (there were many sub-operations however France and the Netherlands were the primary detectives) total near a thousand, however precise numbers are not clear. Dozens of weapons, tons (metric, naturally) of drugs and the equivalent of 10s of countless dollars in money were seized. More notably, the chat logs appear to have offered access to people greater up the food chain than regular busts would have.
That the reportedly most popular of encrypted chat companies concentrated on illegal activities might be so completely subverted by international authorities will likely put a damper on its competitors. Like other, more domestic challenges to encryption, such as the perennial complaints by the FBI, this event is more likely to reinforce the tools in the long run.
TechCrunch.
