Tag: law enforcement

New Major Interventions to Block Encrypted Communications of Criminal Networks

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News
Judicial and law enforcement authorities in Belgium, France and the Netherlands have in close cooperation enabled major interventions to block the further use of encrypted communications by large-scale organised crime groups (OCGs), with the support of Europol and Eurojust. The continuous monitoring of the illegal Sky ECC communication service tool by investigators in the three countries involved has provided invaluable insights into hundreds of millions of messages exchanged between criminals. This has resulted in the collection of crucial information on over a hundred of planned large-scale criminal operations, preventing potential life threatening situations and possible victims.
During an action day, a large number of arrests were made, as well as numerous house searches and seizures in Belgium and the Netherlands.  The operation is an essential part of the continuous effort of judiciary and law enforcement in the EU and third countries to disrupt the illegal use of encrypted communications, as was already displayed last year following the successful de-encryption of the EncroChat communication platform.
As of mid-February, authorities have been able to monitor the information flow of approximately 70 000 users of Sky ECC. Many users of EncroChat changed over to the popular Sky ECC platform, after EncroChat was unveiled in 2020.
By successfully unlocking the encryption of Sky ECC, the information acquired will provide insights into criminal  activities in various EU Member States and beyond and will assist in expanding investigations and solving serious and cross-border organised crime for the coming months, possibly years.
Law enforcement in all three countries has been on a continuous stand by during the last month to be able to provide rapid reactions to possible dangerous criminal activities when required. The newly acquired information will now be analysed further
Investigations into the tool started in Belgium, after mobile phones seized during searches showed the use of Sky ECC  by suspects. Worldwide, approximately 170 000 individuals use the tool, which has its own infrastructure and applications and is operated from the United States and Canada, using computer servers based in  Europe. On a global scale, around three million messages are being exchanged each day via Sky ECC. Over 20 percent of the users are based in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Europol has and will continue to provide the authorities of Belgium, Netherlands and other affected countries with tactical, technical and financial support and will be dealing with this important flow of information on criminal activities in order to prevent threats to life and major crimes.
Eurojust has provided advice and support regarding cross-border judicial cooperation and organised 12 coordination meetings to enable this collaboration. The Agency will continue to provide this support and stands ready for further advice and cross-border operational financial support to all Member States and countries involved, to ensure an adequate cross-border judicial cooperation.
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ENISA release new report and training material to fight cybercrime and improve cooperation

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity releases a new report and training material to support the cooperation among CSIRTs, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and their interaction with the judiciary.
The publications are designed to help tackle the challenges of this complex multi-stakeholder cooperation. The report, the handbook and the toolset are a set of deliverables complementing each other as follows:
- The report analyses roles, duties, competences, synergies and potential interferences across Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) - in particular, national and governmental ones, LE and judiciary (prosecutors and judges);
- The handbook helps a trainer explain these concepts through different scenarios;
- The toolset consists of exercises meant for trainees based on the handbook’s scenarios.
The report proposes a methodology to analyse the legal and organisational framework defining the roles and duties, the required competencies of CSIRTs and LE. It also identifies synergies and the potential interferences that may occur while engaging in the activities needed to respond to incidents of criminal nature and in fighting cybercrime.
In addition, it presents a detailed analysis focusing on Czechia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden. The methodology proposed can be used for a more comprehensive future analysis covering additional countries as it is based on:
- desk research;
- subject matter expert interviews;
- the segregation of duties (SoD) matrix.
This SoD matrix is also available in the ENISA repositories in GitHub, as well as the documentation on the Reference Security Incident Taxonomy Working Group (RSIT).
The RSIT working group will meet today as part of the 62nd TF-CSIRT Meeting. These are two other examples of the efforts ENISA engages in to contribute to building a bridge between CSIRTs and LE communities.
Main conclusions of the 2020 report on CSIRTs and LE cooperation include:
- The communities already engage in a number of actions meant to:
  - Avoid interferences wherever possible;
  - Create effective partnerships;
  - Use their synergies to support each other.
- However, interferences may still happen in the process of incident handling and cybercrime investigations, mainly because of the difference in purpose and mandate of each of these communities, i.e. incident mitigation (CSIRTs) compared with evidence preservation and criminal prosecution (LE and the judiciary).
- Joint training activities are organised mainly in community pairs, being either CSIRT and LE or LE and the judiciary. Such activities rarely involve the three communities. The joint training activities help the wider development of the competences required to respond to cybercrime.
- Overall, the 2019 pandemic of the COVID-19 virus did not have any significant impact on cooperation and exchanges between the three communities and their ability to function. Interaction even increased in some instances. For example, daily dialogues became more frequent in order to ensure that each community was kept informed as the situation evolved.
The response to cybercrime requires the cooperation of all actors involved. In this response, CSIRTs, LE and the judiciary perform each a different role and seek different objectives. Helping CSIRTs, LE and the judiciary understand their roles, duties and competences reciprocally will allow a closer cooperation while building on synergies and hence avoid possible interferences.
ENISA has been collecting input from the communities and compiling reports to shed light on the different aspects of the cooperation. These efforts are meant to further enhance the cooperation between CSIRTs and LE and their interaction with the judiciary, In addition, the Agency has been developing training material and co-organising the annual ENISA-EC3 workshop on CSIRT-LE Cooperation. The last edition of this event took place on 16 September 2020.
This new report and training material build on the work already completed in the area over the past. It contributed to the implementation of the ENISA programming document 2020-2022. The work conducted by ENISA in this area is planned to continue in 2021.
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