The criminals thought the devices were secure.
The devices, procured on the black market, performed only a single function hidden behind a calculator app: sending encrypted messages and photos.
For years, organized crime figures around the globe relied on the devices to orchestrate international drug shipments, coordinate arms and explosives trafficking, and discuss contract killings, law enforcement officials said. Users trusted the devices’ security so much that they often laid out their plans not in code, but in plain language.
Unbeknown to them, the entire network was run by the F.B.I.
The F.B.I.’s operation, according to the court documents, which were unsealed by the Justice Department on Monday, had its origins in early 2018, after the bureau dismantled a Canadian-based encryption service called Phantom Secure. That company, officials said, supplied encrypted cellphones to drug cartels and other criminal groups.
On Tuesday, law enforcement officials globally unveiled the three-year operation, in which they said they had intercepted more than 20 million messages and arrested at least 800 people in more than a dozen countries.
In Australia, the effort caught national and international organized crime groups and outlawed motorcycle gangs, with more than 200 people arrested, authorities said. Hundreds more were arrested in Europe, authorities said, and US law enforcement officials were expected to announce more arrests later Tuesday.
The operation, as described by Australian authorities and US court documents, represents a breakthrough for law enforcement. Although authorities have cracked or shut down encrypted platforms in the past, such as an EncroChat call that was successfully hacked by police in Europe, this is the first known instance where officials have controlled an entire encrypted network since its inception.
“We have been in the back pockets of organized crime,” Reece Kershaw, Australian Federal Police Commissioner, said Tuesday.
The FBI operation, according to court documents, which were released by the Justice Department on Monday, had its origins in early 2018, after the bureau dismantled a Canada-based encryption service called Phantom Secure. That company, officials said, supplied encrypted cell phones to drug cartels and other criminal groups.
Seeing a void in the underground market, the FBI recruited a former Phantom Secure distributor who had been developing a new encrypted communications system, called Anom. The whistleblower agreed to work for the FBI and let the bureau control the network for the possibility of a reduced prison sentence, according to court documents. The FBI paid the informant $ 120,000, according to the documents.
Anom devices were mobile phones that had been stripped of all normal functions. Its only working app was disguised as a calculator function: after entering a code, users could send messages and photos with end-to-end encryption.
Working with Australian authorities, the FBI and the informant developed a “master key” that allowed them to redirect the messages to a third country and decrypt them.
Authorities also relied on the informant to sneak the devices into highly insular criminal networks. The whistleblower began in October 2018 by offering the devices to three other distributors with connections to organized crime in Australia.
A big break, law enforcement officials said, came when they were able to put one of the devices in the hands of Hakan Ayik, an Australian who fled the country a decade ago and whom police believe has been directing imports of drugs from Turkey.
The user base grew rapidly and, as of last month, there were about 9,000 active devices and users in more than 90 countries, according to the FBI. In total, more than 300 criminal syndicates used the devices, authorities said, including in Germany. and the Netherlands. and Spain.
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