<story><title>Hundreds arrested as crime chat network cracked</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53263310</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>have_faith</author><text>&amp;gt; Ran a hastily arranged surveillance detection route&lt;p&gt;What did this entail?</text></item><item><author>secfirstmd</author><text>This story is surprising as there were rumours about 18 months ago that EncroChat had been vulnerable. Esp when other similar services had been taken down and targeted.&lt;p&gt;Random side story: 
Governments have become much more aware of the purposes of these sorts of phones and seller.&lt;p&gt;About 18 months ago I was asked to meet with the sales people from a specialist phone company like this one, they were interested in selling them to the NGO&amp;#x2F;journalist market. I&amp;#x27;m always happy to chat and test the utility of interesting security tech and compare versus more common setups (locked down phones, Signal etc). I&amp;#x27;ve met a load of these sort of companies at trade shows etc as I&amp;#x27;m sure many here have but they wanted to meet in person as they were in town talking to various potential clients. The product was decent enough but way beyond the price of anyone in the sector would be able to afford. Anyways the guys were nice and I genuinely didn&amp;#x27;t get a sense they particularly up to anything bad...&lt;p&gt;However when I left the meeting (in a European capital) I had physical surveillance all over me. Not a particularly good team, hence I detected them. Totally caught me by surprise. Ran a hastily arranged surveillance detection route and managed to confirm a few (no doubt there may have been more). At first I thought it might be the company I had met doing it to me for some weird reason. However as I thought through the tactics, people profile and operational reason for doing it to me I can only assume that whoever the local police were had been watching closely anyone who was meeting with the secure phone providers (they were foreign to the country in question, so probably came under more suspicion). No doubt this was because of the connection between a lot of these sort of companies and the criminal underworld. (Again, I didn&amp;#x27;t get the sense these particular sellers were up to no good, I just thought it was an interesting perspective)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Benjammer</author><text>I was so curious about this that I did some googling and read this article about it: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;protectioncircle.org&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;25&amp;#x2F;surveillance-detection-on-yourself&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;protectioncircle.org&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;25&amp;#x2F;surveillance-detecti...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Hundreds arrested as crime chat network cracked</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53263310</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>have_faith</author><text>&amp;gt; Ran a hastily arranged surveillance detection route&lt;p&gt;What did this entail?</text></item><item><author>secfirstmd</author><text>This story is surprising as there were rumours about 18 months ago that EncroChat had been vulnerable. Esp when other similar services had been taken down and targeted.&lt;p&gt;Random side story: 
Governments have become much more aware of the purposes of these sorts of phones and seller.&lt;p&gt;About 18 months ago I was asked to meet with the sales people from a specialist phone company like this one, they were interested in selling them to the NGO&amp;#x2F;journalist market. I&amp;#x27;m always happy to chat and test the utility of interesting security tech and compare versus more common setups (locked down phones, Signal etc). I&amp;#x27;ve met a load of these sort of companies at trade shows etc as I&amp;#x27;m sure many here have but they wanted to meet in person as they were in town talking to various potential clients. The product was decent enough but way beyond the price of anyone in the sector would be able to afford. Anyways the guys were nice and I genuinely didn&amp;#x27;t get a sense they particularly up to anything bad...&lt;p&gt;However when I left the meeting (in a European capital) I had physical surveillance all over me. Not a particularly good team, hence I detected them. Totally caught me by surprise. Ran a hastily arranged surveillance detection route and managed to confirm a few (no doubt there may have been more). At first I thought it might be the company I had met doing it to me for some weird reason. However as I thought through the tactics, people profile and operational reason for doing it to me I can only assume that whoever the local police were had been watching closely anyone who was meeting with the secure phone providers (they were foreign to the country in question, so probably came under more suspicion). No doubt this was because of the connection between a lot of these sort of companies and the criminal underworld. (Again, I didn&amp;#x27;t get the sense these particular sellers were up to no good, I just thought it was an interesting perspective)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>secfirstmd</author><text>Well being trained properly is the best advice as there is nothing more risky than thinking you are clean and are not. It was on foot in a busy city so it&amp;#x27;s way too much to write up here but if your interested in reading basic stuff from a general security guide follow the link in my bio.</text></comment>