With the prolonged enquiries into Operation Venetic and the hacking of EncroChat servers, many people continue to wonder how the police were able to breach the wall of encryption to gain access to the servers.
With EncroChat supposedly providing completely safe end-to-end encryption for all of their clients, how could the police have possibly pulled off such a difficult feat?
Theoretically, EncroChat did, in fact, provide its users with completely safe communications between one another – however, this did not mean that the encryption was completely unbreachable.
Throughout this blog post, we are going to be discussing how the police eventually managed to infiltrate the EncroChat servers and what this meant for the fate of EncroChat and its users.
What Is EncroChat?
EncroChat is a mobile phone company that was shut down in the aftermath of Operation Venetic due to the vast amount of criminal activity that was taking place on their servers.
While initially being created with zero malicious intent, EncroChat’s secure encryption quickly made it a hotspot for various criminal organisations to hide their activities from local authorities and law enforcement.
When first launched, EncroChat offered mobile phones with complete end-to-end encryption for their users to be safe from malicious hackers that may attempt to steal their personal information.
However, the vast majority of users by the time EncroChat was taken down were members of larger criminal organisations or were carrying out dirty dealings of some kind. Some reports suggest the messages intercepted by the police confirmed individuals discussing drug operations, organised kidnappings and murders among much more.
The hack itself was later named the famous “Operation Venetic” and led to the arrests and identifications of hundreds of people working for criminal organisations.
The Results of Operation Venetic
As briefly mentioned above, Operation Venetic was massively successful in bringing the criminal activities of many organisations to a close with hundreds, if not thousands, of arrests being made since the hack in June 2020.
When the breach was initially made, police found over 100 million messages between different criminals organising all kinds of heinous acts from murders to kidnappings.
Overall, Operation Venetic has led to over £2 million worth and over 2 tonnes of drugs being seized by UK law enforcement making it the largest criminal drugs bust in the history of the UK.
This was a major step in the right direction from the perspective of law enforcement in Europe as it has been the largest pushback against criminal activity that the continent has ever seen.
As stated previously, the operation led to over 100 million messages being exposed to the eyes of the police. This did not matter if the users were using EncroChat innocently which has been one of the major complaints in many defence cases.
60,000 people were signed up to use EncroChat devices at the time that the servers were breached by police. While many people were conducting criminal activity, it is also highly likely that many of these members have needlessly had their information breached without any major reason.
How Did The Police Hack EncroChat?
When discussing the encryption that EncroChat offered, many people still tend to wonder how the police actually managed to break through it – especially considering EchroChat claimed it could “guarantee anonymity” to all of its users.
To do so, police were required to plant Malware to infiltrate the EncroChat servers and gain access to the inner workings of the majority of the devices that use EncroChat encryption.
It appears the police did not use brute force to get through the encryption wall but instead opted to compromise some of the EncroChat servers in order to push their malware onto specific devices to infiltrate the system.
This eventually led to over 32,000 of the 66,000 EnchroChat users being affected by this breach across 122 countries showing the enormity of Operation Venetic and the effect that it has had on so many across Europe.
This trick is what allowed law enforcement to gain access to over 100 million messages originally meant for only the eyes of the sender and the receiver. This then led to one of the largest criminal busts in history.
EncroChat Legal Challenges
A discussion that has continually brewed since the EncroChat hack was whether the hack was conducted in keeping with the law. This is vitally important for defence solicitors to establish early in the case as this would mean that the messages obtained by police could not be used as evidence in a court of law.
Deciding whether this information has been obtained legally is something that is done regularly in EncroChat court cases. It has now been widely found that the information obtained through Operation Venetic is legal to use during EncroChat court cases.
This has been ruled despite most other types of court cases in the UK ruling that information obtained via interception is illegal and ineligible to be used as evidence in the courtroom.
However, across Europe, the various judicial systems are beginning to question this ruling and host their own verdict on what they believe should be admissible as evidence, meaning that the opportunity has risen for more and more people to have greater defence cases.
EncroChat Solicitors Legal Defence
At EncroChat Solicitors, we will ensure that you are given the greatest possible defence case that will present you with the best chances of either a reduced sentence or being proven innocent.
Our philosophy is that everyone is entitled to legal defence services and defence which is why we do everything in our power to provide our clients with nothing less than excellent defence in the courtroom.
If you are concerned about the current ongoings with Operation Venetic or perhaps believe that you are next in line to be targetted for questioning about your EncroChat activity, please do not hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team at 0330 133 6541 or email us at contact@encrochatsolicitors.com and we will be happy to help wherever possible.
