- Messages obtained from an agricultural E2EE service used to tear down a criminal gang
- Sky ECC Service is still providing information, four years after being closed
- A hotel, property, effective and vehicles were seized in the operation
Europol has carried out several raids against a prolific network of organized crimes involved in cocaine trafficking and washed money.
The raids led to the arrest of 10 suspects and the seizure of a complete tourist hotel, as well as many other real estate sites and more than € 100,000 ($ 116,106) in cash.
But the secret of the success of the operation came to analyze the encrypted communications of a chat network that closed more than four years ago.
Communication Network Analysis
The encrypted communications network in question is the Sky ECC network operated by Sky Global.
The network was closed by the police in 2021 due to the use of the platform by international criminal organizations to facilitate drug trafficking. Accusations and arrest warrants to the CEO of Sky Global, Jean-François EAP, and a former distributor, Thomas Herdman were issued.
Together with the seizure of the website, the police also confiscated a treasure of hundreds of millions of messages sent among thousands of criminals using the Sky ECC application, which protected their messages with cryptography of elliptical curve of 512 bits. It is these messages that are still being used by Europol in Operation Sky ECC and the limit of the operational work group.
Europol has launched numerous repressions after criminal organizations throughout Europe using messages of the message treasure.
In this particular Europol operation, directed by the Albanian Spak, researchers from Albania, Belgium, France and the Netherlands used communication data to identify the location of cocaine deliveries of multiple tons of South America to the EU ports, for which an objective of the operation received more than $ 40 million. The delivery ports included main centers such as Antwerp and Rotterdam.
In the arrested suspects, the leader of the criminal organization was included, which was also sought in Italy for murder, deprivation of liberty, attempt to hide from a corpse, threats, illegal possession of explosives and ammunition, as well as obstruction of justice.
This operation, and the case of Sky ECC, highlights the thin line between the use of encrypted communications to guarantee the privacy of the data and avoid corporate or governmental overreach, and abuse data privacy to operate an international criminal ring responsible for drug trafficking and wash hundreds of millions of euros.
