{"id":605514,"date":"2023-02-07T07:49:38","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T13:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/cops-make-arrests-and-seize-drugs-after-hacking-exclu-encrypted-messaging-app\/"},"modified":"2023-02-07T07:49:38","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T13:49:38","slug":"cops-make-arrests-and-seize-drugs-after-hacking-exclu-encrypted-messaging-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/cops-make-arrests-and-seize-drugs-after-hacking-exclu-encrypted-messaging-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Cops make arrests and seize drugs after hacking Exclu encrypted messaging app"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

European police have shut down an encrypted messaging service used by thousands of people including members of organised crime groups.<\/p>\n

A joint operation led by Dutch and German police has led to more than 45 arrests following a multi-country probe into the Exclu encrypted messaging service.<\/p>\n

Police covertly read decrypted communications on the app for five months before launching coordinated raids, according to a series of announcements<\/a> on Monday 6 February 2023.<\/p>\n

Exclu claims on its website to offer the \u201cmost secure encryption protocols\u201d, which it says have been audited by cryptography experts to ensure they contain no backdoor vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnd-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you\u2019re communicating with can read what\u2019s sent, and nobody in between, not even Exclu,\u201d it claims.<\/p>\n

Customers could buy a six-month subscription to the service, allowing them to share text messages, pictures and videos, according to a statement by the European justice agency Eurojust.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe application was praised by users for its high level of reliability and service,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The encrypted messaging service had 3,000 users, including 750 Dutch speakers.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/i>Clues discovered in German cyberbunker<\/h3>\n

German police began investigating Exclu in June 2020 after discovering that the service had been hosted in a notorious \u201ccyberbunker\u201d in Traben-Trabach<\/a>. The bunker allegedly hosted drug marketplaces on the dark web before being shut down by German police in September 2019.<\/p>\n

Exclu continued to use a server in Germany.<\/p>\n

In a series of coordinated raids on 3 February 2023, 1,200 police officers in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Poland searched 79 addresses.<\/p>\n

Police dismantled two drug laboratories and seized \u20ac5.5m in cash, 300,000 ecstasy tablets and 200 mobile phones, which are being examined by forensics and digital experts.<\/p>\n

Police in the Netherlands and Germany made 45 arrests. Holland\u2019s Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD<\/a>) arrested a 51-year-old man from Tilberg in southern Holland on suspicion of money laundering. Investigators seized cryptocurrency<\/a> and an encrypted phone from his home.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

<\/i>Exclu accused of supporting organised crime<\/h3>\n

Police accuse the operators and owners of Exclu of supporting organised crime and drug trafficking by providing encrypted communications services to criminals, according to a statement<\/a> by the public prosecutor\u2019s office in Koblenz, Germany.<\/p>\n

German police said they had executed several search warrants targeting the operators of Exclu but made no arrests.<\/p>\n

Dutch police began an investigation, codenamed \u201c26 Samber\u201d, in September 2021 into the owners and managers of the Exclu service.<\/p>\n

A second Dutch investigation, codenamed \u201c26 Lytham\u201d, began on 28 April 2022 into users of Exclu who were suspected of involvement in organised crime.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

<\/i>Innocent Exclu users urged to contact Dutch police<\/h3>\n

Dutch police have asked users who can claim legal privilege<\/a>, such as lawyers, notaries and clergy, to email the Openbaar Ministrie<\/a> \u2013 responsible for bringing prosecutions \u2013 to request that their data be deleted.<\/p>\n

The international collaboration to take down Exclu follows similar operations to dismantle encrypted phone networks suspected of being used for organised crime.<\/p>\n

French and Dutch police hacked the EncroChat encrypted phone service in 2020, obtaining millions of decrypted messages and sparking arrests in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden, among other countries.<\/p>\n

Belgian and Dutch Police announced they had penetrated the Sky ECC encrypted<\/a> phone service in March 2021, leading to further arrests of alleged drug dealers.<\/p>\n

In June 2021, Police in 16 countries carried<\/a> out raids after Australian Police and the FBI cracked the An0m encrypted phone network in Operation Trojan Shield.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

<\/i>Dutch lead on encryption<\/h3>\n

The Dutch police have long-standing expertise in cracking encrypted communications services.<\/p>\n

Computer Weekly has previously reported that the Dutch National Forensics Institute (NFI) was a key participant with French police in a two-year project with University College Dublin to study how to break passwords of encrypted systems in February 2019.<\/p>\n

The \u00a32.3m project, Cerberus, played a key role in helping the joint French and Dutch police operation read messages on a server used by the EncroChat encrypted phone network, according to the NFI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Europol provided investigating police forces with real-time operational support to identify imminent threats to life and high security risks during investigations into Exclu.<\/p>\n

Eurojust has supported judicial cooperation on the investigation into Exclu since February 2022, hosting eight meetings between Dutch and German prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

Computer Weekly contacted Exclu for comment through its website but received no response.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Gaylene Stoval<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

European police have shut down an encrypted messaging service used by thousands of people including members of organised crime groups. A joint operation led by Dutch and German police has led to more than 45 arrests following a multi-country probe into the Exclu encrypted messaging service. Police covertly read decrypted communications on the app for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":605515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26031,27598,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-605514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arrests","8":"category-seize","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}