This blokes in trouble then:
When an Australian underworld figure began distributing customised phones containing the app to his associates as a secure means to communicate, police could monitor their messages. The gangs believed the system was secure because the phones did not have any other capabilities – no voice or camera functions were loaded – and the app was encrypted.
Wonder where they broke it?
Quite possibly they didn’t break the encryption – if you’ve hacked the app you get access to the unencrypted form as it’s going in or coming out. Why batter your way through a wall when you can walk through the front door?
Surely all the police would need is one of the phones to fall into their hands? Then they’d be plugged right into the network wouldn’t they?
Didn’t the French do that recently — hack the actual system, not break the encryption?
Encryption is used against man in the middle wracks, it’s no use if you have access to the unencrypted information.
Apparently the Feds created the app, so they always had the encryption keys. https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/08/operation_ironside_anom/
Goes to show how important access to the server’s source code is. Signal comes to mind as a good option based on that, Matrix too. Telegram and whatsapp not so much.
There’s some more here.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/mass-raids-arrests-across-australia-after-police-sting-dismantles-encrypted-app-used-by-criminals-20210607-p57yya.html
Looks like the cops (the FBI?) created an app which they had a key to and then got crooks to spread it out for a few years. Then they rolled it all up
Being Oz, the gangsters they really need to catch are in the police and the judiciary.
Oz, the only land where the courts are so biased (at least in Victoria) that they made me sympathetic to the plight of a Roman Catholic cardinal.
Not just happening in Oz, we’ve got a part of the UK end of the same OP going on here in Perth,UK.
The police have been next door since yesterday ripping it apart and taking away all sorts of evidence and arresting connected parties. Car park behind at the back of my apartment block is still sealed off and a uniformed copper keeping everybody inside from leaving. Bit irritating to be quite honest.
The local drug dealer obviously got wind of the arrests because he fled yesterday afternoon, a few hours before the police raided. He didn’t take much more than his underwear though.
Urban street theatre.
Likely the FBI developed something to spy on Mr. Trump and associates, found nothing so repurposed to busting international drug dealers.
“Urban Street Theatre”
Is there a Mime?
Nah. Just a dead body and a lot of coppers. Spent an hour talking to a pair of female bobbies about it all. Just coincidental I suspect.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/perth-kinross/2290465/investigation-launched-after-body-found-in-perth-flat/
As usual, Randall can explain it all in two pictures;
https://xkcd.com/538/
They were actually selling the phones themselves, to the crims, and reading all their messages!
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/fbi-sold-phones-to-organized-crime-and-read-27-million-encrypted-messages/