Police Hacked Criminal Communication Network, Leading to Arrests and Seizures! | June 27 2023
Channel: Hacking Space Frontier
Date: 2023-06-27

Three years after a successful police operation to hack the EncroChat encrypted communications service, law enforcement officials announced that over 6,500 suspects have been arrested. The operation targeted EncroChat, a specialized encrypted communications platform widely used by organized crime groups in Europe. During a press conference in Lille, representatives from the French and Dutch criminal justice systems provided an overview of the operation's results. The figures presented included 6,558 arrests, which encompassed 197 "High Value Targets." In addition, significant amounts of cash, assets, and drugs were seized, including €739.7 million in cash, €154.1 million frozen in assets or bank accounts, 30.5 million pills of chemical drugs, 103.5 tons of cocaine, 163.4 tons of cannabis, and 3.3 tons of heroin. Furthermore, 971 vehicles, 271 estates or homes, 923 weapons, 21,150 rounds of ammunition, 68 explosives, 83 boats, and 40 planes were seized. The operation also claimed to have prevented around 100 assassinations.

EncroChat was a communication platform that offered encrypted services to its customers, who predominantly consisted of criminals. For a fee of approximately €1,000 per device, customers were provided with modified mobile phones designed to protect their privacy, with features like removed cameras and GPS functionality. These devices contained a hidden communications platform. In 2020, cyber specialists compromised the EncroChat platform under circumstances that remain controversial. The main controllers of EncroChat have not been publicly identified, but three out of four mid-level participants were arrested in the Netherlands last year. The fourth participant is currently evading authorities and is being pursued by both French and Dutch investigators.

While the press conference did not specify the countries in which the 6,558 suspects were arrested, the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) previously reported that over 2,800 people were arrested in the UK based on intelligence obtained from the EncroChat hack. The legality of the operation has been consistently challenged by defendants involved in serious organized crime activities, but the French and Dutch prosecutors defended the operation's lawfulness and the integrity of the data it produced. Numerous prosecutions and court cases based on the intelligence gathered from EncroChat are still ongoing in the United Kingdom and across Europe.