European police take down Encryption services used by criminals in 5 countries

 

Dutch & French police take down Matrix encrypted

chat app; 2.3 million messages captured

Dutch and French authorities have cracked another encrypted communication service that criminals allegedly used to communicate with each other. The service, named Matrix, was the successor to previously cracked services such as ANOM, Sky ECC, and EncroChat. Police were able to intercept over 2.3 million messages and were able to read along with conversations for months.

The police were made aware of the service after the murder of Peter R. de Vries in July 2021. A phone was found in the getaway car with the encrypted messaging service on it.

The messages that were intercepted are linked to serious crimes such as “ international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering,” according to a statement by Interpol.

Two suspects were arrested at the Netherlands' request in Marbella, Spain. One of them is allegedly the owner of the service, a 52-year-old man from Lithuania. A 30-year-old from the Netherlands was also arrested. He used the service and is also suspected of international cocaine trafficking in 2020.

In addition, six houses were searched in Spain, and a villa worth 15 million euros was seized. Half a million euros in cryptocurrency and 145,000 euros in cash were also seized. Furthermore, four vehicles and more than 970 telephones were taken. Searches were also carried out at six locations in Lithuania.

Dutch police said the Matrix app was targeted along with similar encrypted services known by the names Mactrix, Totalsex, X-quantum and Q-Safe. The investigation did not spotlight the similarly-named Matrix open source communication protocol.

The police had already taken down various comparable services in the past. In 2016, servers belonging to Ennetcom in Canada were seized. This was followed by PGP-SAFE, IronChat, and EncroChat.

Investigate services made a big impact when they took down SKY ECC, a service with 70,000 users, 11,000 of those being Dutch citizens, in 2021. The services ANOM and Ghost were also taken down after this.

Police say that Matrix was more complex than its predecessors and more international. Detectives saw messages in 33 languages during the investigation. The service was controlled from Spain, while most users were in Southern Europe.

Matrix’s infrastructure consisted of more than 40 servers, with the most important of these being in France and Germany.

Detectives from the Netherlands, France, Lithuania, Italy, and Spain took part in the investigation.

Reporting by ANP and NL Times

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New Hampshire Stands Up for Pedophile's Freedom of Child Pornography Trafficking

New Hampshire introduces US-first bill over Tor privacy software

© Joe Raedle / AFP

A new bill has been introduced by state legislators in New Hampshire to allow public libraries run privacy software, such as Tor. It is the first law of this kind in the US.

The legislation comes after last year's incident in Lebanon, New Hampshire, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) caused a Tor relay to be removed from the Kilton Public Library.

Tor allows internet traffic to be bounced over three relays, using three layers of encryption, making the original IP address undetectable. The traffic passes through a final "exit relay" before reaching its final destination, and the IP address of that last relay is signaled as the source of the traffic (rather than its actual source IP address).

As they conceal the original IP address, Tor exit relays are sometimes used for illegal activity online, drawing the attention of law enforcement agencies.

Sometimes? How about most of the time. It is used for the buying and selling of child pornography - the world's fastest growing business. It is used to sell drugs, and weapons without security checks. It is used for all kinds of evil and it is difficult to think of any legitimate use other than espionage and perhaps some media communications in hostile (read Muslim) countries.

I cannot see anything good coming out of the use of Tor in a public library. The idea is frightening and abhorrent.

The Department of Homeland Security emailed the local police about Kilton Public Library’s use of the anonymous internet browsing service last September, leading to a meeting between local law enforcement, city officials, and the library.

The Tor relay at the library was suspended for a week before being restored after a vote by the library board of trustees.

Sean Fleming, the library’s IT director, told ArsTechnica before the vote that there was “no pressure from the feds at all.”

This first of its kind bill was put forward by Republican Representative Keith Ammon in a response to that incident, and sponsored by six other lawmakers.

Although running Tor or similar programs is perfectly legal for public libraries, the legislation is being seen as a strong show of support for the right to use such privacy software.

The Library Freedom Project helped draft the bill. The Daily Dot reports that project’s founder Alison Macrina said: “I think that no matter what happens, whether this passes or not, it's a pretty important step in recognizing these things are really important, and law enforcement and intelligence agencies are threatening our right to use them,” she said.

Although Tor is largely funded by the US government, the National Security Agency (NSA) has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, according to the Guardian.

The discussion on digital security versus national security reached a pivotal point this week when Apple CEO, Tim Cook revealed the company does not intend to comply with an FBI request to create a “backdoor” to the iPhone so investigators can access data on the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.