Back in 2020, law enforcement agencies across Europe have made great strides in fighting organized crime. They successfully compromised EncroChat, a secure encrypted messaging service that runs on modified Android phones and promises “safe and secure communication.”
EncroChat’s customers are almost all criminals, and they are willing to buy an encrypted phone from EncroChat (for around £1000) and pay a hefty subscription to keep using the system. was.
The EncroChat handset also comes with a “panic” option that allows all data to be deleted by simply entering a four-digit code, believed to undermine police attempts to gather evidence of fraudulent activities.
However, law enforcement was able to gain complete control of EncroChat’s infrastructure and read users’ supposedly encrypted messages in real time.
At a livestreamed press conference this week, Europol shared its latest findings on EncroChat, an encrypted messaging system widely used by criminal groups.
Law enforcement was able to intercept over 115 million conversations between criminals by an estimated 60,000 users. Europol says the surveillance has helped “prevent violent attacks, attempted murders, corruption, large-scale drug trafficking, and obtaining large-scale information on organized crime”.
According to Europol, the EncroChat demolition has so far resulted in 6,558 arrests (including 197 high-value targets) and the seizure of nearly €900 million and hundreds of tons of drugs. To date, criminals convicted as a result of evidence collected from EncroChat face a total prison sentence of 7,134 years.
As you can hear in this episode of the Smashing Security podcast, one EncroChat user was identified after submitting a photo of his pet dog through the service (presumably from the dog’s pet tag, indicating that he You probably didn’t realize that the phone number you should know was revealed.) It’s probably kept private. )
In another hilarious incident, a Liverpool drug dealer was identified after sending a photo of mature Stilton blue cheese from a supermarket via Encrochat.
What he didn’t realize, as he explained on another episode of the Smashing Security podcast, was that the photo showed enough palms and fingertips for Merseyside Police to identify him. It was that
Imagine being caught like that, believing yourself to be a heavyweight in the criminal world…
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