Police already infiltrated EncroChat servers in January 2019

Investigation services were already in the network of the encrypted chat service EncroChat much earlier than expected. This allowed the police to view the administration of the service, and possibly decrypt messages earlier than previously known.

The Algemeen Dagblad reports this on the basis of internal file documents . According to the newspaper, the Dutch and French police and judicial services had access to the EncroChat administration since at least January 2019. That service was taken offline this summer. The police then said they could read in real time with more than 20 million messages for two months between April and July . EncroChat was a service where messages were encrypted via otr. The service was especially popular with criminals.

Now it appears from documents that the AD saw that the police had already penetrated into the EncroChat system at the beginning of 2019. There they could have a look at the company’s administration. According to the newspaper, ‘an overview of sales, shipments and finances’ has been found.

From that period, a list has also been created with activated usernames. The newspaper also writes that photos and notes from users have been looted since January 2019. These were also stored encrypted, but according to the file the keys for them are ‘possibly present in telephone data’. The file also shows that the Netherlands Forensic Institute already managed to crack several EncroChat phones at the end of 2019, but that would not be related to the action of the police.