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The service used three separate encryption standards, and users could remotely "self-destruct" all messages if, for example, the phone fell into the hands of the authorities.
The market for encrypted chat apps has been booming for a long time. These apps encrypt messages to prevent strangers from reading private conversations. The most popular and which shocked the world were the "SkyECC" and "EncroChat" applications, which were turned into the den of criminals.
In these applications, all the criminal activity of different groups was organized, starting from the drug trade to paid murders. Decomposing these applications and opening the messages has revealed many crimes that happened years ago around the world but also in Albania.
Shutting down the SkyECC app didn't stop criminals from embracing other online apps that offered the same service. This was revealed by Europol during an international investigation, where police announced this week that they had taken down another encrypted chat app called Ghost, used by criminals around the world.
The operation, coordinated by the European Union's police agency Europol, is the latest in a string of chat app takedowns that have led to hundreds of prosecutions.
But what is the "Ghost" app?
The market for encrypted chat apps is booming, with WhatsApp being the most well-known and popular service. These apps encrypt messages to prevent strangers from reading private conversations between users. But several features of the Ghost service, which first appeared on the scene in 2021, made it much more attractive to criminals, according to Europol.
Users would buy a customized phone instead of simply downloading an app from an online provider.
Users could get Ghost without providing any personal information or an existing phone number, making it 100% anonymous.
The service used three separate encryption standards, and users could remotely "self-destruct" all messages if, for example, the phone fell into the hands of the authorities.
Europol said Ghost used "hidden" servers in Iceland and France, its founder was in Australia and the money trail led to the United States.
Who used it?
According to the police, "Ghost" was used almost exclusively by criminals.
" Over many months, and indeed hundreds of thousands of intercepted communications, we have no evidence to suggest this was used by anyone other than criminal enterprises ," said Assistant Commissioner David McLean of the Australian Federal Police.
Europol said the app had several thousand users worldwide with around 1,000 messages exchanged every day.
Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, deputy executive director of Europol, said the operation had brought down a vehicle that was a lifeline for serious and organized crime.
This app enabled drug trafficking, arms trading, extreme violence and money laundering on an industrial scale. So far, 51 people have been arrested in connection with the operation, most of them in Australia.
Have there been apps like this before?
Several other major apps have been taken down in similar operations in recent years. EncroChat was a reputable service used almost exclusively by criminals and like Ghost came with specially modified phones.
When it was removed, police said the criminals moved into the Sky ECC, which was then dismantled. Three years ago another service, ANOM, was taken offline and hundreds were arrested. But the problem here was that "ANOM" was created and run by the FBI from the beginning.
Police said at a press conference on Tuesday that Ghost was not as big or as widely used as these other services and that the landscape for encrypted apps had become "fragmented", RTE reports .
Why was "Ghost" removed?
WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram are among a crowded field of apps that tout themselves for the privacy of their conversations. Although their services are legal, some of the content is not.
The founder of Telegram, which offers some encrypted services although it is not private by default, was recently arrested in France for allowing criminal content on its platform.
The big difference is that the vast majority of users of these apps are apparently not criminals, while the purpose of "Ghost" seems to have been to enable private conversations between criminals./ Pamphlet
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