The Belgian police pride themselves on having carried out the largest operation in its history and France can now follow suit.
The Sky ECC encrypted telephone network, the object of a vast anti-crime operation on Tuesday among our neighbors, is also targeted by a procedure in France which has identified around 2,000 users and could allow other offenses to be updated. , said Wednesday the Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz.
In France, investigating judges from Lille began investigating Sky ECC in August 2019 before the investigation was entrusted last December to Parisian judges of the National Jurisdiction in charge of the fight against organized crime (JUNALCO), adds the prosecutor in a press release.
The investigation is in particular opened for "association of criminals with a view to the commission of a crime or an offense punishable by 10 years of imprisonment" and for "provision of service of a means of cryptology aiming at ensuring functions confidentiality without a compliant declaration ”.
"High-profile criminals"
For the prosecutor, these investigations "allow the opening of incidental proceedings relating in particular to large-scale drug trafficking or attacks on people".
"The network with which we have to do seems to be almost exclusively used by large-scale criminals" with "about 2000 line holders in France and a subscription price which would be very high", according to him, "up to more than 2000 euros per line and for six months ”.
"Normal-looking phones, Android or iPhone, are equipped with the Sky ECC system, and offered by unofficial resellers," he said.
“Massively marketed” and extremely encrypted, this system provided its owners with “significant protection of their data against intervention by the police and the courts” with the possibility of “erasing their data remotely”, specifies the prosecutor.
"17 tonnes of cocaine seized in Belgium"
But “the investigators of the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ), in particular the Central Office for the Fight against Crime related to Information and Communication Technologies (OCLCTIC) and the Central Office for the Repression of major financial delinquency (OCRGDF), have identified the technical structure of the device and its financing, ”said the prosecutor.
The Sky ECC system, unlike WhatsApp or Signal type messaging systems, was “not declared in France”.
It was "hosted on servers installed on national territory".
This investigation was carried out "within the framework of European legal and technical cooperation in which Eurojust and Europol took an active part".
On Tuesday, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office announced that it had carried out a vast police operation targeting Sky ECC customers with the arrest of 48 people, the seizure of weapons and funds.
This file has also led to the seizure of 17 tonnes of cocaine in Belgium over the past two years.
In a statement published on its site, the company Sky ECC, based in Canada, says "after a thorough investigation" that it is "false" to say that its communication system has been decrypted.
"A phishing application falsely named Sky ECC has been illegally created, modified and downloaded on unsecured devices," said the company, which claims "zero tolerance" towards criminal activity.