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In this segment, Craig tells you about how police hacked a criminal network and why we are seeing a resurgence of ransomware.

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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey, have you been using EncroChat to make sure your communications are secure? It's only thousands of dollars a year and bad guys have been using it.

Well, they've been using it until now. the Europeans caught them. They had this thing called operation and it was being run by various police agencies. it's been reported now by major local news outlets. Motherboard has an interesting article about it as well. I have a tech crunch article about it up on my website, but the police secretly took over.

Encrochat now was something that was designed to be very, very safe, right? A private communication tool for you to use anywhere in the world

[00:01:00] and the way they made this stuff private is they also included the hardware. So the idea here is kind of similar to another company that I've liked over the, over the years.

 It's Silent Circle. They have something called the black phone and in the Silent circle's case, they're using an Android device, which makes me a little bit nervous, but it is being run by some of the best cryptographers in the world. And with Silent circle and the black phone, you, you buy their phone and you can send messages back and forth, and it keeps your teams connected and secure.

They have an app that works on any Android or iOS device now instead of just having to have the physical device, but they still have the physical device, I believe. Let me see. Let me get on there. Yeah. Silent phone. There you go. Silent

[00:02:00] phone deliver secure enterprise. Ready? Silent world, silent manager, or actually that looks like the silent phone is their new product, which is kind of interesting.

They've obviously changed their tune a little bit out there. Anyhow. In order to be truly safe. You need new hardware, at least that's the thinking. And the looks like a Silent circle's changed their tune a little bit. I use. Something in order to keep me and my messages safe. We use WebEx teams internally with our own encryption keys, and that's really quite secured meets military-grade encryption, which we have to do because we provide services to military contracts.

Cheers. This stuff rolls downhill, right? So if we're providing a service to a DOD subcontractor, we have to be compliant with those regulations as well. So we are, and

[00:03:00] then there are some other apps that you can use that are pretty darn good. that worked quite well. Things like WhatsApp, et cetera. But in this case, back to our story here, this was a network that was being used by.

Organized crime and the police apparently were able to monitor a hundred million encrypted messages. Sent through this network called Encrochat  and they were discussing drug deals, murders, extortion, plots. Okay. Kind of everything. and I love this article and vice it starts out saying something wasn't right.

Starting earlier this year, please kept arresting associates of Mark, a U K-based, alleged drug dealer. Mark took the security of his operation seriously with the gang using code names to discuss business on custom encrypted phones made by a company called Encrochat and for legal reasons, they're referring to Mark

[00:04:00] as the pseudonym. Okay. But it goes on and on because the messages are encrypted on the devices themselves. Please couldn't tap the group's phones or intercept messages as authority normally would I still want to encourage chat criminal spoke openly negotiated the deals. In detail and priceless name to customers, explicit references to the drugs they were selling and how much, et cetera, and a motherboard.

This is such a great article, but in the same timeframe, police across the UK in Europe started busting these criminals. And in mid-June, they picked up, the alleged member of another drug gang and then millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs were seized in Amsterdam. Hmm, what's going on? Well, it turns out that the messages weren't really secure, these guys were paying thousands of dollars a year to have these security devices and to have secure messaging.

[00:05:00] But turns out that, due to this mass hacking operation run by the police, they'd been quietly reading these users' communications for months, and then investigators shared the messages with agencies all around. Europe. It's just an amazing scale. It's amazing what they were able to do. It's amazing that the Encrochat people obviously didn't have any real professionals, security people building this stuff, but, man, good for them.

Some of the information and receptive by authorities showed how deeply law enforcement seems to have breached to the alleged criminal organizations. It's just going on and on. The Netherlands, and what they were able to do there pill mill and covered by law enforcement. They were doing this, this goes on for pages.

They got all of this great video and then Encrochat 

[00:06:00] device here. They've got a YouTube video showing all of it. So if you're interested in this, check it out because it just really, I think reinforces the concept that you're not. Safe online with your communications, no matter what you have to be very, very careful.

And if you're using something like WhatsApp, great for you, glad you are. I use what's an app with my, my mastermind, one of my mastermind teams that I'm on. I really enjoy using it. It's simple. It's easy to use. So that's something you might want to look at. And then the other one I use is signal it's called signal S-I-G-N -A-L. Hey, if you want to get information like this from me on a weekly basis, or sometimes even more.

Make sure you are on my email list. Just go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Go there right now, before you forget, and

[00:07:00] you'll be getting this stuff. People who are already on my list knew about these things, how to communicate. Privately and securely, even when we're talking about a family gathering. You don't want to run it through China on Zoom.

Really? You don't. Okay. So how do you do all of that? No, you know, we talked about that in some of my pieces of training and in some of my newsletters. So I'll make sure you go there. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. And if you have any questions. Make sure you ask, just send me an email. M E@craigpeterson.com. So let's get into ransomware because it is once again, your biggest online security nightmare.

You thought the nightmare was over three years ago? No, no, no, no. It is back. And it's back with a vengeance, great article on ZDNet this week. There are so

[00:08:00] many IoT devices we're connecting to our enterprise networks. It is getting more and more dangerous. IOT of course is the internet of things. These are things like your lights, your. Oh, everything, right?

I just saw a thing or an article talking about major hacks going on with some of these network attacks, attached storage devices, these NAS devices that we're putting on that you might think are more or less commercial when they are not. So this is rapidly ransomware shaping up to be the defining online security issue of the era, frankly.

It's a very simple idea. It is so easy to execute right now with increasing sophistication by criminal groups. It has gotten to the point where you can hire a company that writes ransomware and gives you technical support on it. Some of them will even

[00:09:00] just go ahead and take a percentage of the money that you get for the ransoms and you don't have to do anything.

So the ransomware group gives you the software. Gives you all of the services. If somebody gets the ransomware, they're contacting the ransomware group, they're sending the Bitcoin to the ransomware group. The ransomware group is taking their money off the top and sending you the bad guy. The Bitcoin. So we're going to talk about that even more.

When we get back, stick around, you're listening to Craig Peterson and online. Make sure you subscribe right now. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Stick around. We're going to be right back.

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