Dutch Police Fight Crime by Cracking PGP Phones
Dutch police unit Team High Tech Crime decrypted text messages sent via Blackberry mobile devices that featured supposedly unbreakable PGP encryption. As a result, the police were able to read texts ordering a murder.
It was a stunning success for the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), a dedicated team within the Dutch National Police Agency that investigates advanced forms of cybercrime.
Last year, the Dutch police unit, also known as Team High Tech Crime (THTC), announced that as part of a criminal investigation, it had decrypted text messages sent via Blackberry mobile devices provided by the company Ennetcom, whose servers had been seized and copied by the police in 2016. The Blackberry phones, which featured supposedly unbreakable PGP encryption, were alleged to be a favorite means of communication for organized crime in the Netherlands.