Dutch and French police on Tuesday shut down a major encryption service used by criminal gangs, saying it even outrivalled illegal communication tools previously cracked by law enforcement, the EU’s judicial agency said.
“Made for criminals by criminals”, police have been able to read messages sent on the MATRIX chat service for the last three months, Eurojust said in a statement.
The latest breakthrough in the untangling of criminal messages follows those made by police in 2020 and 2021, when they cracked the Encrochat and SkyECC networks, enabling them to read millions of messages by suspected criminals.
“The infrastructure of this platform was technically more complex than previous platforms such as SkyECC and Encrochat,” Eurojust said.
“The founders were convinced that the service was superior and more secure than previous applications used by criminals,” the Hague-based agency said.
For instance, users were only able to join via invitation.
“The infrastructure to run MATRIX consisted of more than 40 servers in several countries with important servers found in France and Germany,” Eurojust added.
“By using innovative technology, the authorities were able to intercept the messaging service and monitor the activity on the service for three months,” it said.
Authorities intercepted and deciphered more than 2.3 million messages in 33 languages during the investigation, added the EU’s police agency Europol.
Messages intercepted were linked to serious crimes such as international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering.
Officers raided premises in France, Lithuania, Spain and the Netherlands on Tuesday, arresting three suspects.
“It is not the first time and will not be the last time that authorities are able to read criminals’ messages in real time,” Eurojust said.
With the take-down of major encryption tools, the communication landscape was becoming “more fragmented” with criminals turning to a variety of less-established or custom-built communication tools, it said.
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