Last year, the FBI and 15 other international agencies set up an operation dubbed Trojan Shield. After the fall of ultra-secure telephones and messaging systems like EncroChat and Sky ECC, the criminal networks had turned massively to a society of encrypted telephony called Anom. What their users didn’t know was that it was the FBI that was behind this company. The dragnet had been enormous, since more than 1,000 members from 300 criminal groups had been arrested. Today, we know more about the functioning of theapplication of encrypted messaging used on more than 12,000 mobiles. The website Vice Motherboard decompiled the Anom app to get the code that wiretapped all the criminals.
An open source code-based trap
To bypass the encrypted communication, the code duplicated the messages and forwarded them to a phantom contact hidden in the user’s address book. This contact was nothing but the FBI. The code also added a statement GPS to the messages transmitted, which made it possible to geotag the place from which the message had been sent. And when the statement was not precise, the possible photos shared by the interlocutors made it possible to remove the doubt. What remains surprising is that the code used comes from a messaging system open-source. This means that non-FBI developers created this code. But it must be said that Anom existed before the FBI does not secretly get involved in its management and that in-house developers who were unaware of it were unknowingly working on code intended to spy on criminals.
Messaging app brings down hundreds of criminals
Article of Edward Backpublished on June 8, 2021
For two years, the FBI had managed encrypted messaging widely used by criminals. Thanks to the intercepted messages, the authorities of 16 countries were able to launch a vast global raid to arrest 800 suspects.
The police of 16 countries have just succeeded in the operation ” the most sophisticated in the world ” against the criminal networks. Some 800 suspects belonging to the mafia, motorcycle gangs, drug trafficking networks and many others have been arrested across the globe. The operation was called Trojan Shield (“ Shield of Troy ”), or Ironside in Australia.
The crackdown was made possible by Anom, a system of special devices containing encrypted messaging, which traded on the black market for around $2,000. Far from guaranteeing secure exchanges, servers were actually run by the FBI who had been using it to spy on criminal networks since 2019. The authorities thus had access to 27 million messages exchanged between criminals.
The FBI managed a network of 12,000 encrypted devices in the hands of criminals
Anom had gained popularity after authorities dismantled messengers EncroChat and Sky ECCand offered features like the ability to remotely wipe the contents of the device or set up a special password, which the owner can give under duress instead of the password real to activate a function that notifies its contacts. In total, there were more than 12,000 devices in circulation, belonging to 300 criminal syndicates in around 100 countries.
Authorities searched more than 700 residences, and seized more than 8 tons of cocaine, 2 tons of amphetamine and methamphetamine, 22 tons of cannabis250 firearms fire and $48 million in liquid and cryptocurrencies. The operation is the result of cooperation between 16 countries, including European countries, United StatesCanada, Australia and New Zealand.
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