Security News > 2021 > March > Europol Credits Sweeping Arrests to Cracked Sky ECC Comms

Europol launched "Major interventions" against organized crime on March 9, which it said were made possible by monitoring the encrypted messages of around 70,000 users of the Sky ECC service since mid-February.

Europol said Sky ECC has about 170,000 users who send around 3 million messages every day, adding that 20 percent of those users are in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Sky ECC refutes that messages were breached, posting a notice on its homepage saying, "Dutch police confirms that they are investigating a fake Sky ECC phone," the company said.

The reseller is called SKYECC.EU, and Sky ECC provided photos of the phone seized by Dutch authorities, for comparison to an authentic Sky ECC phone.

"The confusing references to Sky ECC instead of SKYECC.EU are very damaging. If authorities have based any assessment of Sky ECC on account of SKYECC.EU, they are severely mistaken about the nature of Sky ECC and its operations."

The question is, how many Sky ECC customers are willing to gamble on whether Europol is bluffing? Or, will many just move on to another encrypted messaging service, similarly to when they migrated from EncroChat last summer?

News URL

https://threatpost.com/europol-arrests-cracked-sky-ecc/164744/