Cyber Defense eMagazine February 2021 Edition

Hackers who have breached networks through a particular app clarified how programmed bots are used
to connect with consumers – for ease as well as to defer liability. To market the services to prospective
clients, the researcher posted photographs of the channel titles spray-painted on walls outside transit
hubs and other public locations.
The use of "death drops" to deliver the product is another big shift in the way these drug traffickers work.
Many dealers now have scrapped their old ways of face-to-face meetings, which avoids the risk of
tracking or intercepting drugs through the postal system. They now place goods in locations that are
publicly accessible, such as beaches, until the address is sent to the buyer only after the order has been
completed. Semi-anonymous tokens such as bitcoin allow the transfers to be smoother in comparison to
their previous dealings.
The drop gangs were first identified to function in Ukraine, but have since been found in Russia, the
Balkans and much of Central and Eastern Europe. Europol Special Advisor Rik Ferguson points to endto-end
encryption and restricted identification checks which make gangs attractive for apps like Telegram.
Given the prevalence of drop gangs and the authorities' difficulty in monitoring and preventing
them, security analysts caution that it will be risky to push applications.
The challenge for Law Enforcement
The proliferation of new apps is what’s proving most challenging to law enforcement. It’s staying ahead,
it’s knowing what is the next platform that they have to be on and we live in unprecedented times. We
live in a world now where countries are used to - for many hundreds of years certainly, possibly thousands
- having national sovereignty and having jurisdiction over what goes on in their country. However, the
internet isn’t built like that and the apps that run on the internet are global in nature. It is a human, ethical
and philosophical challenge as much as it is a legal one.
However, the months before July 2020 police managed to secretly take over a global phone network for
organised crime. Police were able to monitor a hundred million encrypted messages sent via Encrochat,
a network used by career criminals in order to discuss drug deals, murders and extortion plots.
Only now is the operation's incredible scope coming into focus: it constitutes one of the biggest law
enforcement infiltrations ever utilised by offenders in a messaging network, with Encrochat members
extending across Europe and around the world. The messages "have given insight into an unprecedented
large number of serious crimes, including large, international drug shipments and drug labs, murders,
thrashing robberies, extortions, robberies, grave assaults and hostage takings. International drug and
money laundering corridors have become crystal clear," Dutch law enforcement said.
Encrochat claims on one of its associated websites that it is a "end-to-end encryption tool" that can
"guarantee privacy," and that chatting with Encrochat is "the online equivalent of a daily conversation
between two individuals in an empty room" for "worry free communication." Already other firms that have
been found to be advertising to old clients of Encrochat as other encrypted telecommunications
companies are trying to fill the void left by Encrochat.
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