Police Decrypt 258,000 Messages After Breaking Pricey IronChat Crypto App

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Police in the Netherlands said they decrypted more than 258,000 messages sent using IronChat, an app billed as providing end-to-end encryption that was endorsed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. In a statement published Tuesday, Dutch police said officers achieved a 'breakthrough in the interception and decryption of encrypted communication' in an investigation into money laundering. The encrypted messages, according to the statement, were sent by IronChat, an app that runs on a device that cost thousands of dollars and could send only text messages.

'Criminals thought they could safely communicate with so-called crypto phones which used the application IronChat,' Tuesday's statement said. 'Police experts in the east of the Netherlands have succeeded in gaining access to this communication. As a result, the police have been able to watch live the communication between criminals for some time.' Blackbox-security.com, the site selling IronChat and IronPhone, quoted Snowden as saying: 'I use PGP to say hi and hello, i use IronChat (OTR) to have a serious conversation,' according to Web archives. Whether the endorsement was authentic or not wasn't immediately known. The site has been seized by Dutch police.

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