The investigative services have again brought down a provider of encrypted communication. It would again be a service to send encrypted messages that was popular among criminals. According to various sources, dozens of arrests have been made.
A spokesman for the police declined to comment on the new action.
According to insiders, it concerns Exclu Messenger, which promises a ‘worldwide’ usable network of uncrackable encrypted messages. The company itself speaks of the ‘most sophisticated communication platform‘. Among the users of the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) messages are several prominent criminals and their close ones.
The criminal investigation into those involved with the provider and the intercepted message traffic is still in full swing. Exclu is not considered a major player. The users were reportedly located mostly in the south of the Netherlands. Various sources report The parole that the wave of arrests is still going on.
Revolution in Investigation
Since 2016, the investigative services have succeeded several times in seizing or hacking the computer servers of a series of widely used encryption services. This caused a revolution in detection. Hundreds of millions of intercepted PGP messages were used to conduct hundreds of criminal cases involving serious crimes, in which criminals were sentenced to long prison terms.
How does a PGP phone work? Read here: This is how Taghi secured his smartphone
In 2016, the Canadian servers of the Dutch provider Ennetcom were the first to be seized. In the years that followed, PGP Safe (Costa Rica), EncroChat (France) and SkyEcc (France), also managed by the Dutch, followed. In June 2021, it was announced that American investigative services had taken over provider An0m, so that it could be read live. That operation also provided evidence in several criminal cases.
Legitimate evidence
Lawyers have been battling for years against the allegedly unlawful seizure of some of the servers, but they continue to fail in courts and tribunals, which see the messages as lawful evidence.
In addition to providing evidence in criminal cases, the data from the seized servers also provide the investigative services with plenty of new insights into the way in which the underworld operates.
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