What is the sting operation 'Troy's Shield Operation' in which the FBI and others have built a fake encrypted communication network and intercepted the messages of criminal organizations?
On June 7, 2021, more than 800 criminals were arrested around the world in a large-scale joint raid operation in collaboration with law enforcement agencies from 17 countries, including Europe, the United States and Oceania. It seems that this detection is the culmination of the international sting
'Every message was copied to the police': the inside story of the most daring surveillance sting in history | Crime --Australia | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/11/inside-story-most-daring-surveillance-sting-in-history
Europol said in a statement on June 8, 2021 that more than 700 home searches were conducted and a total of 800 people were arrested in an international joint raid operation. In addition, 8 tons of cocaine, 22 tons of cannabis and cannabis resin, 2 tons of synthetic narcotics such as amphetamine, 6 tons of precursors of synthetic narcotics, 55 luxury cars, 250 firearms, totaling 48 million dollars (about 5,253,300,000 yen) It seems that a considerable amount of cash and crypto assets have been seized. The encrypted message application 'An0m' was used for this detection operation.
800 criminals arrested on FBI-operated fake encrypted communication network 'Anom'-GIGAZINE
An0m, which was advertised as the most secure encrypted message app in the world, is sold in the form of a 'smartphone equipped with the app', and the price is $ 1,700 (about 187,000 yen) for the device itself, a subscription that can use the app The application was very expensive at 1250 dollars (about 138,000 yen) per year. In addition, many functions have been removed from the smartphone, and it was not possible to access the website or even make a phone call. What's more, it couldn't be purchased at regular stores or mail order, and could only be obtained through special routes.
The customer of An0m was a criminal organization that needed to hide and exchange messages with law enforcement agencies. In order to use An0m, it is necessary to operate from the top screen by a special procedure, and since all messages are encrypted, there is no worry of being intercepted, and we have built a closed loop system only for members who use the application. rice field. In addition, An0m has 'a function to delete data when the user has not used it for a certain period of time', 'a function to automatically delete highly confidential messages after opening', and 'a function to send voice memos disguised as the user's voice'. It had features that were convenient for criminal organizations.
You can check the actual smartphone equipped with An0m in the following article.
What is the real thing of the FBI sting operation encrypted communication app 'Anom' that arrested 800 criminals? --GIGAZINE
An0m, which was especially appreciated by drug organizations, was actually operated by law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Since the release in 2018, all 19.37 million messages sent and received by about 10,000 An0m-equipped devices have been collected by law enforcement agencies, and the contents have been analyzed mainly by AFP. This large-scale sting operation was called 'Troy's Shield Operation' and eventually led to the large-scale 'Big Bang' on June 7, 2021, based on the analyzed message.
The start of Troy's shield operation, in which law enforcement agencies from 17 countries participated, was an investigation into Phantom Secure, a Canadian company that sells smartphones specializing in encrypted communications. Phantom Secure's custom smartphone was used by Mexico's giant drug cartel 'Sinaloa Cartel' and international criminal organizations, and it was said that it had earned tens of millions of dollars (billions of yen).
Vincent Ramos, CEO of Phantom Secure, was arrested in March 2018 after noticing that their product was being used by a criminal organization but ignoring it and continuing to sell it. The FBI offered Ramos a deal to 'make a backdoor on Phantom Secure's smartphone and lighten the decision instead of allowing the FBI to monitor the movement of criminal organizations,' Ramos said. rejection. Eventually the FBI shut down the Phantom Secure server and the cryptographic platform disappeared.
CEO of a company that sold a high-security 'secure phone' equipped with a function to encrypt communication is arrested --GIGAZINE
The FBI was unable to get inside Phantom Secure's network, but the lack of a huge crypto platform created a gap in the market. With this in mind, the FBI and AFP have started a project to 'build their own encrypted network from the beginning, rather than trying to enter an existing encrypted communication network.'
The project, dubbed 'Operation Troy's Shield,' hired a former distributor of the FBI's 2018 judicial transaction, Phantom Secure. A total of 180,000 dollars (about 19.8 million yen) was paid to this person in terms of expenses and salary, and he said that he developed the Arcane OS that runs the An0m application and the smartphone body. An0m has a built-in 'master key' that is secretly attached to every message, allowing law enforcement agencies to decrypt and store the message. In other words, messages sent via An0m effectively put law enforcement agencies in BCC.
However, Troy's Shield Operation must not only develop apps for criminal organizations, but also encourage criminal organizations to actually use An0m. Therefore, AFP first distributed 50 An0m-equipped devices to three Australian distributors to confirm that they are 'smartphones suitable for the next-generation Phantom Secure.' Once An0m was tested and won the trust of the criminal organization, we used 'word-of-mouth and influencers within the criminal organization' to increase our market share, just like regular products.
One of the people who played an important role in the spread of An0m is Australian drug trafficker Hakan Ike. Ike is one of Australia's most wanted list and has fled to Turkey. Ike, who is said to be involved in drug smuggling of 1.5 billion dollars (about 165 billion yen) a year, said that he recommended to his friends that he would get an An0m-equipped device, and unconsciously played a role in infiltrating criminal organizations with An0m. It is said that he was in charge.
Following success in Australia, An0m distributors have expanded to Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands, Finland, Mexico and Thailand. Eventually it was used by 300 criminal organizations operating in 90 countries around the world, and it was said that Germany, Spain and the Netherlands had the same number of An0m users as Australia, and with the expansion of the An0m network, law enforcement agencies The amount of messages that Germany collects has also increased. It seems that some of the analyzed messages were related to the murder plan, and AFP adopted a policy of 'intervening even in the middle of Troy's shield operation only if there is a possibility that someone will be killed.' During the 18 months from the start of the project to the Big Bang on June 7, 2021, he intervened in a total of 21 cases, but it was detected that 'An0m's message was leaked to law enforcement agencies'. It was next to the danger of being done.
After that, in March 2021, Sky Global, a cryptographic communication network that was also a competitor of An0m, was caught, and the number of users of An0m increased sharply. It was decided to embark on a big bang to be caught. In order to prevent information leakage in advance, it seems that the Big Bang's decision was hidden to the last minute even inside AFP, and most of the personnel were not informed until one week before the decision. As a result, the Big Bang was successful and criminal organizations from around the world were caught.
AFP played a central role in Troy's shield operation in Australia, where the ' Anti-Encryption Law ' was passed in December 2018, and government agencies legally collect a large amount of messages from An0m users. It is said that there was a big point that could be done. On the other hand, the FBI in the United States, which does not have a similar law, obtained the 'cache of messages collected by AFP' via a third country and analyzed the messages using the master key.
Since the An0m-equipped device was carefully sold in a series of operations, it is unlikely that journalists and human rights activists who are not criminals used An0m. But The Guardian mentions that smartphone surveillance software Pegasus has been monitoring many politicians and human rights activists in recent years, and authoritarian governments spread fake encrypted message apps inspired by An0m. I pointed out that there is a possibility.
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