Encrypted Smartphone | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In a joint operation, European and British law enforcement agencies recently arrested hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals after infiltrating into a global network of an encrypted chatting app that was used to plot drug deals, money laundering, extortions, and even murders. Dubbed EncroChat , the top-secret encrypted communication app comes pre-installed on a customized Android-based handset with GPS, camera, and microphone functionality removed for anonymity and security. EncroChat phones aim to securely exchange data and messages with pre-loaded apps for secure instant messaging, VOIP calling, self destruct messages, and includes a 'kill code' functionality to let users remotely wipe complete data in times of trouble. The handset and its services, which cost around £1,500 for a six-month subscription, had 60,000 users worldwide and approximately 10,000 users in the United Kingdom. "EncroChat phones were presented to customers as guaranteeing pe...

On Tuesday, the Dutch Police arrested a 36-year-old man, Danny Manupassa , on suspicion of money laundering and involvement in selling encrypted smartphones to criminals. Manupassa owns a company called Ennetcom , which provides customized Blackberry Phones with the secure PGP-encrypted network. Reportedly, Ennetcom sold nearly 19,000 encrypted cell phones at 1500 euros each in last few years. Police have seized Ennetcom servers based in the Netherlands and Canada and pulled them offline. The seized servers contain data of encrypted communications belong to a large number of criminals. According to a press release , the investigation is ongoing and seized data from the servers will be analyzed soon. Police believe this operation would result in collecting evidence required for solving numerous ongoing investigations involving drug trafficking, assassinations, and other serious crimes. Moreover, Canadian Police is also involved in this investigation and surprisingly, i...

Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it's no surprise why: securing sensitive data has become harder than ever. And it's not just because companies are dealing with orders of magnitude more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly shifting, and data is stored across multiple technologies and cloud environments. Not to mention, compliance requirements are only getting stricter and more elaborate.  The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, the usual strategies for securing that data are stuck in the past. Gone are the days when data lived in predictable places, with access controlled by a chosen few. Today, practically every department in the business needs to use customer data, and AI adoption means huge datasets, and a constant flux of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies for securing sensitive data, and a new crop of tools, called data security platforms, have appear...