Cops drill into chat apps, sink plot to smuggle tons of coke into Europe | Hacker News Reader

Cops drill into chat apps, sink plot to smuggle tons of coke into Europe

theregister.com

15 pointsrntn9 comments

Why do criminals always use some weird AF chat app that no one has heard of to plot their crimes? Obviously it’s back-doored. All those billions of drug dollars and no one told them about Signal?

Criminals that get caught. Police forces in Rotterdam for example estimate they can find about 10% of the cocaine shipments going through the port. The vast majority of crime is unreported, very lucrative and corrupts an official near you. And I bet they don't use moronic tactics like planning crime in off brand chat apps.

There's a considerable amount of FUD about mainstream chat apps. Like that whole kerfuffle when cellibrite said "we can read messages from signal" (if we have the phone, and the phone's not encrypted) leading to a signal dev figuring out how to hack a stingray (greykey, really), and threaten to make every phone with signal installed do that when connected.

I do wonder what these unnamed chat apps are. I assume part of the reason for not naming them is to cause more FUD.

Any links/sources to these events? More for further reading/curiosity!

Here's two stories posted here about it. I forgot it was three years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25494253 - Cellebrite claims it can break Signal (schneier.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25520481 - No, Cellebrite Cannot “Break Signal Encryption” (signal.org)

The ones using Signal don't get caught so we don't hear about it

When I consider the relative evil between cocaine on the street vs a police surveillance state, I know which is the lesser evil.

> Big blow to blighters' blow-by-the-boatload blueprint

The journalist who wrote this had fun.

Crazy amount of cash, I wonder if the police get to keep their gloves after counting all the cocaine..

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