Police in the Netherlands and Belgium have made hundreds of raids, and arrested at least 80 people, after cracking into an encrypted phone network used by organised criminals.In a press release, Europol said that crime-fighting authorities in France, Belgium and the Netherlands had not only arrested a large number of suspected criminals, but also shut down the SKY ECC communication platform.According to Europol, authorities have been able to monitor “the information flow of approximately 70,000 users of SKY ECC” since mid-February, “unlocking the encryption” to gain insight into organised criminal activities in Europe and beyond.It is said that around three million messages are exchanged via SKY ECC every day, with over 20% of users are based in Belgium and the Netherlands. Many users migrated to Sky ECC when the similar EncroChat encrypted platform was dismantled by authorities last year.However, it may be a little premature to say that SKY ECC has been similarly brought to its knees.In fact, in a blog post, SKY ECC says that its platform remains secure and – contrary to Europol’s claims – “no authorized SKY ECC device has been hacked.”So what’s going on?SKY ECC says that the clue lies in a press release issued by the Dutch police, which shows a police officer holding an encrypted SKY ECC phone.
Zooming in on the picture reveals that the encrypted app running on the police officer’s smartphone declares itself as being from “skyecc. ..
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