A few years ago they rounded up a ring of crime phones in the Netherlands.. They were using PGP encryption, however instead of each phone generating its own private key, they generated them centrally and kept them in a database. Obviously this introduced a huge vulnerability.
The police compromised the server and was listening in (through cooperation with Canadian police as they were using Blackberries) for quite a while before they started kicking doors down :D They basically got all the evidence on a silver platter.
I'm surprised someone with the skill to develop such an app and service platform doesn't have the skill for avoiding such common mistakes. Or maybe they weren't able to explain to their users that the fact that they couldn't retrieve their messages after forgetting their pincode is a feature, not a bug. Either way, the police was really happy.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-judge-releases...
Not saying the same would have happened here, but crypto is hard to implement correctly and the algorithms are only part of the problem. And this kind of network is a massive target for law enforcement because the ratio of criminal users is huge.
My impression is that the way things go is:
* Sure, a smart person can implement a "homebrew" security protocol that seems safe.
* But smarter people never implement a "homebrew" security protocol and instead use existing protocols, 'cause they know how easy it is to fuck-up.
* The smartest people implement real, secure protocols, working in academic or three letter agencies and have those protocols vetted and peer reviewed. And even these fail on a regular basis.
- Crypto isn't that hard! I can do this!
- Crypto is a lot harder than I though. I shouldn't do this.
- I've read about a lot of crypto! I can do this!
- People way more experienced than me are making the tiniest mistakes that end up crashing the entire house of cards. I definitely shouldn't do this.
Designing a protocol correctly is not that hard, as long as you understand exactly what you are doing. By which I mean you are at least able to write an informal (yet rigorous) proof that it has the security properties you seek. Also, verification tools like Verifpal are a godsend. The tricky part here is avoiding the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's easy to have the illusion of perfect understanding while being unable to write the most basic mathematical proof.
The hardest part is convincing others that your protocol is any good. People who don't understand what you are doing cannot (perhaps even must not) trust your work. They need the vetting of someone reputable, and getting those reputable people to take a look is pretty hard if you don't have the right connections (an uphill struggle without a relevant PhD).
https://www.chch.com/niagara-drug-kingpin-goes-trial-murder/
Good for them, but I hope for their sake their names do not leak.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3aza95/how-police-took-ov...
They probably just didn't use end-to-end because it's easier to offer a nice customer experience without.
If they have built some home-grown algorithm, then it's possible the NCA actually cracked the encryption (with a bit of help from GCHQ) rather than using the baseband processor to snoop on the keys or something like that.