An encrypted chat platform that catered to criminals is actually an FBI sting operation.
Since 2019, the FBI has been secretly operating Anom, a company that pretended to offer encrypted messaging to criminal organizations. In reality, the Anom app would relay to federal investigators a copy of every message sent.
The operation enabled the FBI and international law enforcement to arrest over 800 suspected criminals across the globe, according to Europol.
Anom ended up serving more than 12,000 devices belonging to over 300 criminal organizations, including the Italian mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and crime syndicates based in Asia. The encrypted chat platform recorded messages covering assassination plots, mass drug trafficking, and illegal gun distribution.
The operation marks US law enforcement’s latest attempt to circumvent encryption on smartphones. For years now, the FBI has been urging Apple to create a backdoor into its iPhones, citing the need to collect evidence against suspected criminals. Apple has thus far refused, so the agency has contracted professional smartphone hacking services to help it unlock devices seized in investigations.
With Anom, the FBI used an entirely different strategy to tackle the challenge of encryption. The genesis for the sting operation occurred with the FBI takedown of a separate encrypted chat platform popular among criminals called Phantom Secure.
“When we took down Phantom Secure in 2018, we found the criminal organizations moved quickly to back-up options with other encrypted platforms,” said FBI San Diego Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jamie Arnold in a statement.
As a result, the FBI and its law enforcement partners attempted to fill the void with Anom. According to Vice, a confidential source who sold phones using Phantom Secure had been developing their own encrypted chat platform; the source then offered up the platform to the FBI, which began working to circulate Anom in criminal underground circles.
According to Australian Federal Police, the Anom encrypted messaging app was installed on special phones that had been stripped of other capabilities. “The mobile phones, which were bought on the black market, could not make calls or send emails. It could only send messages to another device that had the organized crime app. Criminals needed to know a criminal to get a device,” Australian Federal Police added.
To market itself, Anom also had its own YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit pages, which advertised the app as a secure communications platform.
The FBI has since replaced the Anom.io website with a notice that says: “Law enforcement has been monitoring messages and attachments from the ANØM platform. A number of investigations have been initiated and are ongoing.” Users of Anom can learn if they’re under investigation by typing in their username and smartphone details into a form on the site.
