Five years on from Sky ECC hack: drug crime in Belgium remains undiminished
In March 2021, the breach of encrypted communications service Sky ECC led to 48 arrests in Belgium. Five years later, drug trafficking continues unabated.
Five years on: the legacy of the largest telecommunications hack in Belgian investigative history
VRT NWS takes stock of the Sky ECC investigation, five years after a coordinated police operation cracked the encrypted communications system and sent shockwaves through the Belgian drug underworld.
On 9 March 2021, at 5 o'clock in the morning, 1,600 officers simultaneously heard the command in their earpieces: go-go-go. House searches followed at more than 200 addresses across Belgium. Using a specially developed application for the operation, the headquarters at the Brussels federal judicial police (FGP) continuously tracked who was found where and when they were taken out. By evening, the counter stood at 48 arrests, the seizure of €1.2 million, eight luxury vehicles and large quantities of cocaine.
"We are witnessing a milestone in the history of investigative work," said Yve Driesen, head of the Antwerp FGP, at the well-attended press conference that followed. "I am enormously proud of what was accomplished."
How it began: a kidnapping in Antwerp in 2016
The seeds for this investigation lay in November 2016, when Younes El M., nicknamed 'El Magico', was kidnapped near Antwerp's Sportpaleis — a kidnapping situated within the drug underworld. Antwerp FGP investigators came across a Sky ECC device for the first time during that investigation: a mobile phone that allowed communication in a way that third parties could not read or listen in on.
Within a year, more than 100 such encrypted devices were found, spread across around forty files involving serious crime. Whenever a phone was seized, the device would be wiped remotely. Professional frustration grew, but was transformed into determination. "We got our teeth into it and didn't let go," the two Antwerp investigators at the heart of the investigation said.
A fundamentally different way of investigating
In May 2018, the organised crime section of the federal prosecutor's office was brought into the investigation, owing to its scale and the complex legal and technical questions it raised.
The investigation departed from classical investigative methods. Normally, investigators start from the facts — a murder, a shipment — and look for evidence to identify the perpetrators. Here it was the reverse: investigators had a mass of evidence and had to build a file from there. It soon became clear that Sky ECC was being used worldwide, but was notably concentrated in Belgium and particularly in the Antwerp port area — a clear link to drug imports.
In 2019, Belgium, France and the Netherlands launched a joint judicial investigation into a criminal organisation. American authorities later joined in. A so-called Joint Investigation Team (JIT) examined SkyGlobal — the Canadian company that brought Sky ECC to market.
Technical and legal hurdles
The central challenge: how to gain access to encrypted communications in a way that would stand up in court? The solution was found in the Budapest Convention, the international treaty governing the fight against cybercrime. In Belgium, investigative judge Philippe Van Linthout was appointed, specialised in cybercrime.
From June 2019 to March 2021, the JIT intercepted communications via two servers in Roubaix, France. A French investigative judge issued a wiretap order for this purpose. It took a year before investigators actually gained access to the content of the messages. The ambition was to monitor as many as 170,000 users.
SkyGlobal meanwhile maintained that the company offered its services for purely privacy reasons. "We return privacy to those to whom it belongs," was the message. In an official statement, the company confirmed that it would not hand over text messages, photos, videos, telephone numbers, dates of birth, metadata, IP addresses or user locations to law enforcement. The system was promoted by the company as 100 per cent secure.
114 murders prevented, according to Europol
Once police had full access to the messages, a panoramic picture of organised crime unfolded. Europol chief Catherine De Bolle stated that the hack prevented 114 murders. "We were able to follow everything directly: shipments, pickups, kidnappings, beheadings," De Bolle said.
Five years on: a persistent problem
Despite dozens of trials and hundreds of arrests in the wake of the Sky ECC hack, drug trafficking in Belgium remains undiminished. Criminals have since switched to other encrypted communications channels. The investigation, which officially began in 2016 and peaked in February and March 2021 when police gained full access to the messages and conducted the large-scale raid, is regarded as one of the most ambitious investigative operations ever in the fight against organised crime in Europe — but has not broken the fundamental dynamics of international drug trafficking.
Source: VRT NWS