EncroChat

EncroChat handsets emerged in 2016 as a replacement for a previously disabled end-to-end encrypted service.[6] The company had revealed on 31 December 2015 the Version 115 of EncroChat OS, which appears to be the first public release of their operating system.[7] The earliest version of the company's website archived by the Wayback Machine dates back to 23 September 2015.[8]

According to a May 2019 report by the Gloucester Citizen, EncroChat was originally developed for "celebrities who feared their phone conversations were being hacked".[9] In the 2015 murder of English mobster Paul Massey, the killers used a similar service providing encrypted BlackBerry phones based on PGP. After the Dutch and Canadian police compromised their server in 2016, EncroChat turned into a popular alternative among criminals for its security-oriented services in 2017–2018.[10][11]

Through a marketing strategy of "relentless online advertising",[12] EncroChat rapidly expanded during its four and a half years of existence, benefiting from the closure of its competitors PGP Safe and Ennetcom.[13] The network eventually reached an estimated 60,000 total subscribers at the time of its closure in June 2020.[3][4] According to the French National Gendarmerie, 90 percent of subscribers were criminals, and the British National Crime Agency (NCA) said it found no evidence of non-criminals using it.[2]

EncroChat first came to the attention of the media when it was revealed that high-profile criminals Mark Fellows and Steven Boyle had been using the encrypted devices to communicate between each other during the May 2018 gangland murder of John Kinsella in Rainhill.[14][9][15] The service resurfaced in the media during the summer of 2020 after law enforcement announced that they had infiltrated the encrypted network and investigative journalist Joseph Cox, who had been reviewing EncroChat for months, published an exposé in Vice Motherboard.[16][1]

EncroChat OS

Homescreen of EncroChat OS
Developer	EncroChat
OS family	Unix-like (Linux)
Working state	Discontinued
Source model	Based on Open source Android
Initial release	31 December 2015 (2015-12-31)
Platforms	BQ Aquaris X2 and others
Official website	encrochat.network

The EncroChat service was available for handsets called "carbon units", whose GPS, camera and microphone functions were disabled by the company for privacy reasons.[1][17] Devices were sold with pre-installed applications, including EncroChat, an OTR-based messaging app which routed conversations through a central server based in France, EncroTalk, a ZRTP-based voice call service, and EncroNotes, which allowed users to write encrypted private notes.[18] They generally used modified Android devices, with some models based on the BQ Aquaris X2 phone hardware,[9][1] others on Samsung devices,[17] and sometimes on non-Android BlackBerry mobile phones.[13] Devices with EncroChat were able to boot in two modes. When only the power button was pressed to turn the handset on, they booted into a dummy Android home screen. But when the handset was switched on by pressing the power button together with the volume button, the phone booted to a secret, encrypted partition which facilitated secret communication via EncroChat's French servers.[11] A "panic button" feature was available, where a certain PIN inputted to the device via the unlock screen would erase all data on the phone.[1][19] According to journalist Jurre van Bergen, the IP of EncroChat's server points to French web hosting company OVH.[18] EncroChat's SIM provider was the Dutch telecommunications firm KPN.[1]

EncroChat devices were particularly popular in Europe, although they were also sold in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. One source told Vice Motherboard that they became the "industry standard" among criminals.[1] They were reported in July 2020 to cost €1,000 (£900) each, then €1,500 (£1,350) for a six-month contract to use EncroChat's solution.[2][20] EncroChat's website says that the firm had resellers in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Madrid or Dubai, although Cox describes EncroChat as a "highly secretive" firm which "does not operate like a normal technology company."[1] The phones were reportedly bought via a physical transaction which "looked like a drug deal",[1] and at least one case involves an ex-military operative selling devices in Northern Ireland.[21]

The EncroChat encrypted messaging service and the related customized phones were discovered by the French National Gendarmerie in 2017 when conducting operations against organized crime gangs.[2][22] At the time of the Fellows and Boyle trial in December 2018, the NCA struggled to crack the lock screen passcode, as anything was wiped out after a set number of attempts.[9][11]

The investigation accelerated in early 2019 after receiving EU funding.[2] Intelligence and technical collaboration between the NCA, the National Gendarmerie and Dutch police culminated in gaining access to messages after the National Gendarmerie put a "technical tool" on EncroChat's servers in France.[20][22][1] The malware allowed them to read messages before they were sent and record lock screen passwords. EncroChat estimated that around 50 percent of devices in Europe were affected in June 2020.[1][16] The National Gendarmerie formed a special unit to investigate the hacked information on 15 March 2020, then signed an agreement with the Dutch Police to form a joint investigation team (JIT) on April 10, co-operating through Eurojust with the support of Europol.[2]

The data was distributed by the JIT to other European partners, including the UK, Sweden and Norway.[23] The NCA began to receive information about the content of messages on 1 April 2020,[2] then started to build data analysis technology to automatically "identify and locate offenders by analysing millions of messages and hundreds of thousands of images".[24] The chief of the Dutch National Police Force, Jannine van den Berg, compared the malware to "sitting at the table where criminals were chatting among themselves".[4] In May 2020, the wipe feature was disabled at distance by law enforcement in some units. The company initially tried to push an update in response to what was initially regarded as a bug, but the devices were struck again by malware altering lock screen passwords.[1][16]

On the night of 12–13 June, once EncroChat suspected the infiltration by law enforcement had occurred,[2] users received a secret message reading as:

Today, we had our domain seized illegally by government entities(s). They repurposed our domain to launch an attack to compromise the carbon units. ... Due to the level of sophistication of the attack and the malware code, we can no longer guarantee the security of your device. ... You are advises [sic] to power off and physically dispose your device immediately.[1][16]

A few days later, an "email address long associated with EncroChat" informed Vice Motherboard that the service was shutting down permanently "following several attacks carried out by a foreign organization that seems to originate in the UK"; Cox publicly disclosed excerpts of the email on 22 June.[25] Europol and the National Crime Agency refused to comment at the time.[1] The identity of the persons in charge of EncroChat has not been revealed as of 3 July 2020.[26]

The Canada-based company Phantom Secure, which started as a legitimate firm selling modified mobile phones,[1] provided "secure communications to high-level drug traffickers and other criminal organization leaders" according to a 2018 FBI takedown announcement.[39] Its CEO, Vincent Ramos, was sentenced in 2019 to a nine-year prison sentence after telling undercover agents that he created the device to help drug traffickers. Customers included members of the Sinaloa Cartel,[40] and the FBI reportedly asked Ramos to plant a backdoor in Phantom Secure's encrypted network, which he refused to do.[41]

The secure mobile phone company MPC was revealed in 2019 to have been created by Scottish criminals James and Barrie Gillespie. Christopher Hughes, a former employee of the company, is wanted by Dutch police for the murder of criminal turned blogger Martin Kok in December 2016.[42]