The global police sting against organised crime revealed on Tuesday will prove a landmark in the technological arms race with the underworld, an industry expert said.

The use of ANOM, a supposedly encrypted communication device planted with criminals in more than 100 countries, highlights the technological battle between police and criminal gangs worldwide, said David Weinberger, who heads the research arm into global crime at the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

What does Operation Trojan Shield tell us?

New encrypted technologies are being used extensively by traffickers and criminals of all kinds. They had a significant head start with the advent of methods for encrypting telephone communications. But now, police forces are managing to overtake them and deal them hard blows with what (in this case) can be viewed as a Trojan Horse.

Isn't that a misnomer?

In every period of history, we see that criminals can have a technological advantage over law enforcement, which, after a while, manages to adapt and regain control.

We saw this with the use of cars in the 1970s and 1980s, mobile telephones through utilising different handsets and chips, and then encrypted messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

There, we realised that they were using secure global systems. The criminal groups thought they were out of reach, but since EncroChat (an encrypted communications network infiltrated and then dismantled in 2020 by France and the Netherlands), we are entering a new phase.

Law enforcement agencies have succeeded in infiltrating these encrypted messaging systems on the one hand and in setting up dedicated systems on the other.

This is a case that, along with EncroChat, is a milestone in the recent history of the fight against crime.

So criminal groups have huge investment capacities?

Some criminal groups can invest significant amounts in research and development. In drug trafficking, we have seen this in camouflage methods, transport methods, custom-made submarines, techniques for making false documents.

It is not uncommon for a criminal organisation to lose a means of transport worth several million euros, without this posing any real financial problem. These groups can invest tens of millions of euros in this kind of thing.

What is the next step in this technological race?

You can imagine anything. They must already be trying to find ways of getting around it, knowing that communicating securely is a major issue. We can imagine new networks, satellite or otherwise.

In Mexico, there are homemade networks that make it possible not to use traditional networks. We know that there is an internationalisation of criminal activities. It has become easier and easier to coordinate trafficking, to transport illegal goods around the world and this has increased the importance of communications.

What about the old-fashioned carrier method?

One of the strategies for getting around this technological war may be to go back to extremely simple systems, such as messengers or pigeons... We know that the more technology there is, the more opportunities there are to be hacked and monitored.

We have seen this with telephones: many traffickers have gone back to mobiles from the 2000s because they are much less susceptible to hacking. But we are in a period of globalisation of economic activities. And criminal activities are intertwined with the real economy, so they follow the same trends.

With a little delay?

More like one step ahead. The motivation of criminal organisations can be summed up with two points: the activity is extremely lucrative, and the risks run up to incarceration or death. So there is a very strong motivation to be at the cutting edge of methods and technologies.

Furthermore, compared to public bodies or private companies, they are not limited by regulatory or normative constraints. This gives them more flexibility.

ANOM global phone sting: What we know
Sydney (AFP) June 8, 2021 - Law enforcement agencies from three continents on Tuesday revealed a vast FBI-led sting operation that sold thousands of supposedly encrypted mobile phones to criminal organisations and intercepted their messages for years.

Police accounts and unsealed US court documents, first cited by Vice News, reveal an ambitious worldwide plot that was years in the making.

What is ANOM?

ANOM was billed as a fully secure encrypted mobile phone that promised the user total secrecy in communications.

Essentially it was a jailbroken handset that used a modified operating system -- removing any of the normal text, phone or GPS services that would make it trackable and traceable.

On the surface, the device would look like a normal mobile phone, but it contained a "secure" messaging service hidden behind a functioning calculator app.

In theory, the phone operated on a closed network -- ANOM phones could only communicate with other ANOM phones using "military grade" encryption that transferred data via secure proxy servers.

The phones also contained a kill switch to delete contacts or any other data stored locally.

Similar services like Phantom Secure, Sky Global, Ciphr, and EncroChat have for years been used by criminal networks for planning and communication -- and many have been exploited by law enforcement.

Where did the FBI come in?

In March 2018 Phantom Secure's CEO Vincent Ramos was indicted by grand jury and along with colleagues would eventually plead guilty to a raft of charges related to drug trafficking.

Shortly after that, an unnamed "confidential human source" presented the FBI with a next-generation encrypted device -- that would be dubbed ANOM -- which was designed to replace discredited, defunct or infiltrated systems.

The same source agreed to disseminate the now FBI-compromised devices among a network of blackmarket distributors who had sold Phantom Secure to carefully vetted or vouched-for individuals, usually members of organised criminal gangs.

Why did criminals buy it?

Initially, 50 ANOM phones were distributed in a test run, mostly to members of Australian organised criminal gangs.

But through word of mouth they gained in popularity with criminal underworld figures, who reportedly recommended them to friends.

Interest in ANOM exploded in 2020 when European authorities rolled up EncroChat, with dozens arrested, and after Sky Global CEO Jean Francois Eap was detained.

In the end, the FBI, Australian authorities and an unnamed "third country" were able to access more than 20 million messages from 11,800 devices in 90 countries.

They were most popular in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and Serbia.

Why did the operation stop?

There is no clear rationale given about why the operation stopped now. However a mixture of suspicions, legal hurdles and strategy may have contributed.

Law enforcement did not have real-time access to phone activity but instead, all sent messages were blind copied or 'BCCed' to FBI servers where they were decrypted.

One server was in a third country where the warrant was due to expire on June 7, 2021.

But even ahead of that deadline, suspicions were being raised.

In March "canyouguess67" posted on WordPress that ANOM was a "scam" and that a device he had tested was "in constant contact with" Google servers and relayed data to non-secure servers in Australia and the United States.

"I was quite concerned to see the amount of IP addresses relating to many corporations within the 5 eyes Governments (Australia, USA, Canada, UK, NZ who share information with one another)," the post said before it was deleted.

In addition, one stated aim for "Operation Trojan Shield" was to undermine trust in encrypted devices, a goal that could only be widely achieved when the operation was made public.

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