Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Criminal gangs across Europe and the world.

- They're running guns, trafficking drugs,

they're killing people.

[gunshot fired]

- [Narrator] Using highly encrypted phones

to stay under the radar.

- The level of security on these EncroChat devices

would be the envy of James Bond.

- If the encryption is done correctly,

then we believe it's impossible to crack.

- [Narrator] The police are always one step behind.

- It's a game of cat and mouse

between the organized criminals and law enforcement.

- [Narrator] Until one team of investigators

turns the phones against their users.

- The clock is ticking. The police have to move on it.

[door bangs]

[indistinct shouts]

- All this will lead to more arrests, more seizures,

and dismantling of criminal networks.

[ambient music]

- [Narrator] These are the codes that changed our world.

Bizarre markings, random letters, and numbers,

words that make no sense.

But cracking them unlocks military secrets,

decodes ancient civilizations,

and reveals enemies in our midst.

Now we uncover how they were decoded,

the genius minds that broke them,

and the secrets they reveal.

[dramatic music]

[suspenseful music]

May 5th, 2018.

On the outskirts of Liverpool, England,

53-year-old John Kinsella is walking his dogs

along a quiet country lane.

It's a sunny early Saturday morning,

and the last one Kinsella will ever see.

- 6:45 In the morning,

it was a kind of country path along the M62.

At the same time,

on CCTV is captured a cyclist

in hi vis gear,

heading out, going for a bike ride.

- [Narrator] But this innocent-looking cyclist

is anything but.

He's an armed assassin.

- He takes out a gun and he shoots John Kinsella four times.

[gunshots fired]

Twice in the back.

And then he goes over and shoots him again.

[gunshots fired]

- [Narrator] Local police are in no doubt,

this was a gangland execution.

And they know this because Kinsella was a gangster.

[suspenseful music]

- John Kinsella was part of a gang

that was smuggling drugs in the Northwest of England,

and was involved with rival gangs.

That involves violence,

that involves drug taking,

that involves firearms.

[gunshot fired]

- [Narrator] Despite Kinsella's history,

the gangland assassination is a bombshell.

- A hit to be carried out that quick

with that kind of caliber of weapon in England

was incredibly shocking.

- [Narrator] Using CCTV footage

and painstaking detective work,

a suspect is eventually identified.

38-year-old Mark Fellows,

a member of a rival gang.

- John Kinsella's murder came three years

after Paul Massey was gunned down.

Paul Massey was a notorious gang leader.

In fact, Kinsella had carried the coffin at his funeral.

And his gang, the A Team,

was in direct conflict with another gang, the Anti-A Team.

And there were huge turf wars between these networks

and it got very bloody and very violent.

- [Narrator] Mark Fellows is a known associate

of the Anti-A Team.

Police suspect he pulled the trigger

on gangland boss Massey in 2015

and Kinsella in 2018.

[suspenseful music]

They hope his cell phone will provide the proof

that Fellows was behind both hits.

But initially the phone seems to reveal nothing useful.

- If you turn on the power button once, it's just gonna open

and look like an ordinary Android phone.

- [Narrator] But on closer inspection,

something doesn't add up.

- It's like it's a brand new phone.

It has no history,

which is extraordinary

because every phone has some kind of data.

- [Narrator] The wiped phone is a red flag.

The police suspect Fellows

has been using a sophisticated operating system

favored by criminals that can cover its tracks.

It's known as EncroChat.

- If you press the power button

and the volume button at the same time,

then you are transported to the magical world of EncroChat.

It's almost like being in Gotham City,

this underworld that exists electronically.

- [Narrator] This secret operating system

first appeared in 2015,

and everything about it is shady.

Even buying a handset is a clandestine affair.

- To get an EncroChat phone,

it's a bit like getting hold of a gun.

You've got to know someone who knows someone,

and the deal is done in a back alley.

- [Narrator] EncroChat operates in the shadows.

And so do most of its customers.

- I'm a crime reporter

and specialize in interviewing criminals.

And one of these criminals,

he held up a phone,

and it was this bizarre group chat going on,

and it had photos of guns, drugs.

It was crazy.

- [Narrator] Criminals like Mark Fellows are confident

they can communicate without fear of incrimination.

Thanks to EncroChat's ultra-secure encryption software.

- The service that EncroChat offered

was military grade encryption.

It was encryption that law enforcement,

criminals themselves,

no one has seen anything like this before.

[suspenseful music]

- [Narrator] Encryption scrambles data,

making it seemingly impossible for anyone

other than the sender and recipient to read the message.

EncroChat uses a particularly secure process

known as end-to-end encryption.

- The software and the phone would encrypt a message

as soon as you're putting it into the phone

so that when it was transmitted,

it would already be encrypted.

And on the other side,

the intended recipient would have a secret key

that would allow them to decrypt and receive that message.

- [Narrator] The only risk of messages being intercepted

is if the phone falls into the wrong hands.

But EncroChat has a solution for that too.

- The level of security on these EncroChat devices

would be the envy of James Bond.

Once a message has been sent,

it can be deleted from the phone.

The other key security feature

is that everything on the phone can be wiped in an instant

by keying in a pin code.

- [Narrator] This explains why Mark Fellow's cell phone

was blank when he was arrested.

Either Fellows had wiped the data himself

or the police had wiped it

when they tried to access the phone.

- If someone is incorrectly guessing pins

after a particular number of attempts,

it's gonna automatically erase all the information.

- [Narrator] And that's not the only way

these heavily-modified Android phones protect their users.

- The GPS, the microphones, the cameras,

all of those parts of a phone

that reveal a lot about its use,

are completely disabled.

It doesn't use phone networks, it uses wifi.

So there is no trace of that phone being used.

Police can't locate you and the phone,

they can't position you anywhere near a crime.

- [Narrator] This makes these phones appealing to anyone

who wants to keep their communications private.

- The key selling point is anonymity guaranteed.

In other words,

what you say to other people will be kept completely private

between you and the other person.

- Because it was seen as impenetrable,

criminals started to use it extensively,

to the point I think 90% of the 60,000 people

that were using EncroChat were in fact criminals.

[suspenseful music]

- [Narrator] Serious criminals and gang members

like Mark Fellows are quick to adopt EncroChat

because the alternatives are far less functional

and less secure.

- These days it's possible to buy a mobile phone

extremely cheaply and with no paperwork

and no contract required.

So they really can't be traced.

- Buy burner phones and throw them away just like that,

and leave very little trace of yourself.

- [Narrator] But these so-called burner phones

are far from ideal.

- You can't keep contacts on a burner phone

because that in itself is identifiable.

And so to even try and remember someone's number these days,

I don't think anyone can.

- [Narrator] Modern technology now means

that with the right permissions,

the police can locate a burner phone

or track down where it was purchased.

- If the police find a phone,

they can recover a whole wealth of information,

including contacts, messages, history of activity,

and they can even get a bunch of location-based data.

- [Narrator] This is why EncroChat phones,

with their stripped-down handsets,

are a game changer for criminal kingpins.

[suspenseful music]

But above all, it's EncroChat's bulletproof encryption

that makes the phone such a valuable weapon

in the criminal's arsenal.

- Even if the police intercept a message

between EncroChat phones on route,

it's going to look like gibberish,

and they're not going to be able to read the contents.

- [Narrator] EncroChat enables its users

to send messages without fear of interception

by using a digital key.

- The key is the recipe for encryption

and the recipe for decryption.

- [Narrator] To send a secure message,

both the sender and the recipient use this digital key

to encrypt and decrypt, lock and unlock the message.

- I scramble up a message according to some recipe,

and I send it to you.

And you can only unscramble the message

if you know the same recipe.

- [Narrator] EncroChat uses a digital key.

But the idea of using a cryptographic key is not new.

From Roman emperors to Cold War spies and serial killers,

people have been using cryptographic keys

to lock and unlock secret messages for thousands of years.

And they can be anything from code books to cipher wheels.

But perhaps the most bizarre use of a cryptographic key

involves a playerless piano

and the most beautiful woman in the world.

- How long must he live between us?

- [Narrator] By the time America entered World War II,

Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr

had already lived a colorful life.

- Hedy Lamarr was a young star in German cinema.

She married an Austrian arms dealer who was mixed up

with some of the more notorious fascists of that day.

She managed to escape that marriage,

make her way to England,

where she happened to cross paths with Louis B. Mayer,

and convinced him that she should be in American movies.

- [Narrator] Mayer promoted Lamarr

as the most beautiful woman in the world.

But Hedy Lamarr was more than a pretty face.

[suspenseful music]

She was also a brilliant inventor.

- Early in World War II,

the US had a problem with its torpedoes.

Despite deploying fleets of submarines,

the US was having very limited success sinking enemy ships.

- [Narrator] The US Navy used radio signals

to steer the torpedoes towards their targets.

- Unfortunately, this radio-controlled targeting system

was very easy for the enemy to jam.

All they had to do was tune in the frequency

and then they could overwhelm it

with a transmission of their own.

The torpedo would go off course,

and the ship would sail on safely.

- [Narrator] It was a problem

that Hedy Lamarr thought she could fix,

[piano plays]

thanks to a so-called player piano.

- She often worked with a composer named George Antheil.

And Antheil was an expert

at composing music for player pianos.

This is a technology few people would recognize today.

- [Narrator] Inside a player piano,

a role of paper with punched holes

tells the piano which notes to play.

And bizarrely, Lamarr and Antheil

thought this mechanism might solve the torpedo problem.

Their big idea was to use a similar perforated role of paper

to change the radio signal controlling a torpedo,

just as it changed the notes played on a player piano.

- [James] It would turn on and off switches,

those switches could control the frequency

of the radio receiver or transmitter.

- [Narrator] One role of paper

would be located on the submarine,

another inside the torpedo.

- You had one drum on the submarine

and it would constantly change the frequency

of the radio signal

that's controlling the direction of the torpedo.

The receiver on the torpedo has the exact same system

changing the frequency at which it receives,

and the two of them are moving in sync.

- [Narrator] The signal hops across frequencies

according to a random, prearranged sequence.

Jamming one frequency only interrupts the transmission

for a split second.

And without knowing what's on the paper,

the enemy can't predict where the signal will hop next.

- There's no way that anyone trying to jam the signal

can stay ahead of this constantly changing frequency.

- [Narrator] Lamarr and Antheil's invention

relied on the US Navy giving the keys,

in this case, identical sheets of perforated paper

to both the submarine and torpedo.

Like all encrypted messages,

the system only works if the sender shares the key,

whatever it is, with the recipient.

[suspenseful music]

But this system won't work

for EncroChat's 21st century customers.

- When encryption was something that armies did

or governments did,

sharing the keys was achievable

because armies have dispatch riders,

diplomats have special channels.

The information age can't run

on people exchanging bits of paper with a key on it.

- [Narrator] In a world

where sender and recipient may never meet,

and hackers can eave drop with the click of a few buttons,

how can keys be shared online or over cell phone networks

without fear of electronic interception?

The answer comes from

one of the most secure and secretive places on the planet.

Britain's top-secret cyber security headquarters

in Cheltenham, known as GCHQ.

Here in the 1960s,

British cryptographers solved the problem

of how to send a secret message without sharing a key.

And their solution seems to defy logic.

- I can send you a secret message,

even though we've never met,

you will be able to decipher the message, and only you.

- [Narrator] In the GCHQ solution

and the system used by EncroChat five decades later,

each person has two keys,

one secret private key and one shared public key.

- Their public key,

which they can show to anyone and is not sensitive,

and their private key, which they keep to themselves.

- [Narrator] The first step

in sending a secure locked message to someone

is generating a private digital key.

This is a long string of randomly generated numbers

running into hundreds, sometimes thousands of digits.

- Well it's really hard to guess it if you don't know it,

and it's drawn from a very large space of possibilities.

- [Narrator] The next step

is to generate a public digital key.

This is directly linked

to the recipient's private digital key

through a series of complex mathematical processes.

- The public key is used to specify

how the data is gonna get scrambled.

And its purpose is to be combined with the message

that you're trying to send through a mathematical process

that sort of scrambles and mixes everything up.

- [Narrator] The securely locked message

is then sent to the recipient.

But unlocking the scrambled message then needs

both the recipient's public key

and the private key linked to it.

- If I want to communicate secretly with someone,

I can go look up their public key

and use it to encrypt my message in such a way

that only that intended recipient who holds that private key

will be able to decrypt and read it.

- [Narrator] A secret private key

with a shared public key is an ingenious solution

to the problem of sending secure messages

over insecure networks.

This process is known as end-to-end encryption,

and it happens automatically

every time an EncroChat user sends a message.

[suspenseful music]

But EncroChat isn't the only messaging system

to use end-to-end encryption.

In fact, a billion people around the world

use one every day,

for completely legal purposes.

- End-to-end encryption is an incredibly common tool

that many of us use every day,

especially in messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

And it protects our secure communications

from things like unwanted surveillance,

it protects dissidents and whistle blowers,

and it protects very ordinary things

like our credit card information.

- The difference between EncroChat and WhatsApp

is that WhatsApp regularly work with the police

and will help with an investigation.

- [Narrator] WhatsApp even has a set of guidelines

for law enforcement officials seeking to access its records.

But that still doesn't make it any easier to read messages

that have been securely encrypted.

Instead, the police can access other related data.

- They do have the metadata, meaning the information about

which parties were communicating at what times

and in what amount.

- [Narrator] While WhatsApp

is willing to assist law enforcement,

EncroChat takes a radically different approach.

- EncroChat, as far as we are aware,

have never cooperated with anybody.

- [Narrator] In fact, EncroChat guarantees its customers

it will never give up this information

under any circumstances,

making its end-to-end encryption

a gift for the criminal underworld.

Within months of launching, EncroChat is making a fortune.

Each modified phone sells for around a thousand dollars.

But the real money is in the secure encryption service

provided by EncroChat.

- To subscribe to one, it was about 1,300 to 500,

just for a couple of months.

- [Narrator] As the police can't read their messages

and EncroChat won't release any metadata,

by the time killer Mark Fellows is arrested,

he's just one of many serious criminals

who believe EncroChat makes them untouchable,

free to conduct their business undetected.

But law enforcement is slowly closing in

on operations like EncroChat.

[suspenseful music]

On the other side of the Atlantic,

police have found a way to crack down

on a similar encrypted messaging service,

without cracking the code.

In 2008, Canadian entrepreneur Vincent Ramos

set up a company in Vancouver called Phantom Secure.

Ramos's big idea was to sell secure Blackberry phones

to top flight business people, celebrities,

and wannabe James Bonds.

- These Phantom Secure devices

were straightforward Blackberry phones,

but with key security features in them

quite similar to EncroChat.

So in a way they were the precursor to the EncroChat device.

- [Narrator] With a Phantom Secure phone,

a user couldn't make ordinary calls.

They could only send encrypted emails.

Not surprisingly that made them less popular

with wannabe James Bond business execs,

and more popular with real villains.

- Phantom Secure had clients

including major drug trafficking organizations,

gambling syndicates,

as well as the Hell's Angels out in Australia.

- [Narrator] Like EncroChat, the Phantom Secure phones

used end-to-end encryption software.

But unlike EncroChat,

whose ownership is carefully shielded,

it was clear who was behind this operation.

- Phantom Secure was of openly known...

It was run by Vincent Ramos.

- [Narrator] In February, 2017.

The FBI set up a sting operation in a Las Vegas hotel.

- [Livvy] The FBI, posing as drug traffickers,

had arranged a meeting with Vincent Ramos

to negotiate a deal of buying 200 Phantom Secure phones.

- Ramos was talking about the benefits of these devices

and how they were great for drug dealing.

And that was one of the key things

that helped the authorities take Ramos down.

[gavel hits]

- [Narrator] Ramos was subsequently

sentenced to nine years in jail for racketeering.

Phantom Secure collapsed,

leaving a major gap in the market

that a new provider stepped straight into.

- Another similar device emerged called Anom.

The unique feature of this phone

is that when you use the calculator function,

it was actually to install encryption

on the messages and communications of that phone.

Absolutely perfect for criminals.

- [Narrator] Use of these secure new devices

spread rapidly by word of mouth.

By late 2019,

there were almost 10,000 regular users of Anom,

all of them criminals.

- Anom felt a lot less underground

than a lot of the other encryption services.

If you're a criminal

and the service isn't working quite right for you,

you could ring and get some customer support.

- [Narrator] It seemed too good to be true.

And that's because it was.

- Anom was a sting operation run by the FBI.

They could read all the messages between the criminals.

They could see where drug deals were being planned,

what other violent activities were in the pipeline.

And it proved to be a major coup for the FBI.

- The amount of intelligence

that we received was staggering.

- [Narrator] In June, 2021,

the Anom sting results in a multinational police operation

across 16 countries.

Over 800 people are arrested,

40 tons of drugs seized,

and hundreds of guns, luxury cars,

and millions of dollars in cash recovered.

[suspenseful music]

But the techniques that allowed Anom to succeed

and Phantom Secure to fail

won't work against EncroChat

because incredibly, the company is doing nothing illegal.

- It's not illegal to own an EncroChat phone.

It's not illegal to use an EncroChat phone.

- What is illegal is to plan drug deals

or to plan to kill your rival gangsters.

But there's nothing illegal

about having an EncroChat phone or using it.

- [Narrator] Making matters harder for the police,

the company is based in Panama.

EncroChat is one of thousands

of offshore companies based here.

Existing on paper alone,

but with no mention of the people behind

the highly lucrative operation.

By 2018, police estimate

there are at least 60,000 subscribers

generating up to $180 million a year.

This is very big business.

EncroChat phones are becoming endemic

in the criminal underworld across Europe.

Armed with them, organized criminal gangs

are getting away with murder.

[suspenseful music]

Including Mark Fellows' hit on John Kinsella.

[sirens wail]

In November 2019,

Fellows is tried for murder at Liverpool Crown Court.

CCTV footage captured near the crime scene

reveals an EncroChat phone

played a critical role in the killing.

- The CCTV is really crucial evidence

because it places Fellows

near the murder scene at the absolute critical time.

- And if you look carefully at some of these images,

you can see, Fellows has got a phone in his hand.

- He's using that phone to communicate to his wingman.

Who's parked in a layby in a car,

and that phone is an EncroChat device.

- [Narrator] EncroChat's encryption

means police can't read the messages

exchanged by the two men.

But they believe Fellows' accomplice

used the phone to tell him

when Kinsella was coming into range.

And the simple fact that Fellows used an EncroChat phone

contributes to the evidence against him.

- The prosecution at the trial

say that the EncroChat device

is the favorite device of the criminal underworld.

- [Narrator] The jury agrees.

Fellows is found guilty of the murders

of John Kinsella and Paul Massey.

[sirens wail]

He's given a whole life tariff,

joining an infamous club of just 75 prisoners in the UK

sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

The phone that Fellows thought put him

beyond the reach of the law,

ultimately helped send him down.

[suspenseful music]

But Fellows is just one

out of tens of thousands of criminals

across Europe and beyond using EncroChat

to conduct their illegal business.

- EncroChat phones are being used

for everything in the criminal world.

Major drug trafficking, kidnappings,

plots to murder people,

all being discussed really openly across EncroChat.

- [Narrator] If police can intercept these messages,

they could stop the crimes,

catch the criminals,

and strike a blow to the heart of European organized crime.

But to do that, they need to crack the EncroChat code.

350 miles from Liverpool,

on the outskirts of Paris,

one team of French law enforcement officials

is attempting to do just that.

A dedicated digital crime unit

made up of 60 cyber crime specialists

has been following the rise of EncroChat

since its inception.

But so far, it's failed to find a way

in to EncroChat's ultra-secure encryption system.

To unscramble a message,

the team needs to know the private digital key

used to unlock it.

- In a public key encryption system,

there's this mathematical relationship

between your public key and your private key.

- [Narrator] Because both public and private key

are related,

in theory, it could be possible to identify the private key

by working backwards through the layers of complex math

that connect them.

But the reality is,

EncroChat's digital keys are so long,

this is impossible.

- If you don't know that private key,

you're not gonna be able to reverse engineer what happened

and get back to the underlying message.

- [Narrator] If a billion

of the world's fastest supercomputers

ran all the possible solutions,

it could take thousands of billions of years

to find the private key.

- If the encryption is done correctly

and you don't have any kind of access to the private key,

then we believe it's impossible to crack.

- [Narrator] This is a major blow to the French team

trying to take down EncroChat.

The criminals' messages can't be read

because the code can't be cracked.

- They can't hack into them.

They can't access the messages.

And that was a major problem for law enforcement.

When they realized that these devices

are being used by criminals across the world.

- [Narrator] But the French Digital Crime Unit

doesn't accept defeat.

They think outside the box and hatch a radical plan.

Instead of cracking the EncroChat code,

they plan to use the code

and turn it against the criminals.

But first, they need to find a way into it.

[suspenseful music]

After four years of frustration,

dead ends, and dogged persistence, in early 2019,

the team finds a chink in EncroChat's formidable armor.

- The French police, with some amazing investigative work,

finally found out where the servers

of EncroChat were based.

- [Narrator] One of EncroChat's servers

is located in Northern France.

Due to ongoing criminal cases,

exactly where or how it was found

remains under wraps.

- We still don't know to this day

what led to the breakthrough by French investigators.

My suspicion is that there must have been

some inside information from somewhere,

but it absolutely was the vital step in this investigation.

- [Narrator] Because the servers are linked to the phones,

if the team can infiltrate them,

the hope is they'll be able to observe the encrypted traffic

being sent between EncroChat handsets.

- But even then they can't read the contents of the messages

because of the protection of the encryption,

because the keys are on the local devices

and not on the server.

- [Narrator] Despite being thwarted

by the ultra-secure encryption,

the French Crime Unit refuses to give up.

The solution, when it comes is simple,

turn the server against the phones.

- EncroChat, like pretty much any other software provider

needs the capability to frequently update their software

in response to emerging threats

and bugs that they might find that need to be fixed.

So their servers need the ability to push updated software

to the phones to keep them ahead of threats

as they are discovered.

- [Narrator] The French Digital Crime Team,

most likely working with software developers

and computer programmers,

devises an audacious plan:

to use these software updates from the server

to get inside the EncroChat handsets.

- If someone can gain access to those servers

and install their own piece of software,

then that piece of software

can be pushed through that update mechanism

to all of the phones.

- [Narrator] The plan is to infiltrate the server

using malicious software, commonly known as malware.

- Malware is software

that is designed to infiltrate a system

and take control for an unauthorized user

to perform actions like locking you out of your data

and holding it for ransom,

sending your information to some other party,

and generally doing things on the device

that was not the intention of the user.

- [Narrator] Today, malware is almost always unleashed

by criminal hackers looking to make trouble or money.

But that's not how it started out.

[suspenseful music]

Lahore, Pakistan.

In January 1986,

two budding programmers wrote a program

to monitor heart rates.

This software proved more popular than they anticipated.

Much more popular.

- Programs were typically put on floppy discs.

And so they had found that people could easily copy

the floppy disc and distribute the program without paying.

Now these two young brothers

just wanted to discourage people

from illegally copying and sharing it.

So they inserted this malicious code

to pop up a message that would warn the users.

- [Narrator] The virus, called Brain,

didn't harm the computers,

but it panicked users enough to contact the brothers

and pay the royalties.

Although back in 1986, the internet didn't exist,

the virus spread like wildfire via floppy discs

and changed the digital world.

- This opened up a whole new world of possibilities

for malicious software to be spread

and to gain control of systems.

And in response, an entire industry of antivirus

and defense mechanism has cropped up

to try to protect all of our machines

from these kinds of threats.

- [Narrator] Today, malware

has developed into a battleground

between computer security experts and criminals.

[suspenseful music]

Usually it's the bad guys who are one step ahead.

But in northern France, in the spring of 2020,

it's the French police's Digital Crime Unit

who unleash a malware attack.

How the malware was uploaded has not been revealed.

But however the team did it, it worked.

EncroChat's administrators, whoever they are,

are unaware their servers have been infiltrated.

And when the next software update

goes out to EncroChat handsets,

it takes the French team's malware with it.

- The software updates of course,

would be accepted by any Encro phone user

because it's come directly from the EncroChat servers.

So you'd have no question to doubt it.

- [Narrator] The malware immediately gets to work.

Instructing EncroChat's secure system

to attack itself from within.

Acting like a double agent,

the malware manipulates the EncroChat operating system

on each phone.

And so begins a game of cat and mouse

between the French Digital Crime Unit and the criminals.

- Firstly, they have problems with their password,

and then they have problems with the kill function,

putting in the pin code that automatically

deletes all the messages and data on their phone.

- [Narrator] The criminals can no longer

wipe their phones clean of evidence.

- For the EncroChat users

this is an absolutely vital concern

because if those phones

come into the hands of police and law enforcement,

they can read all those messages.

They've got a goldmine of information,

then that's a real problem.

- EncroChat starts getting complaints from users saying

my kill switch isn't working, you know,

and that's a major feature of the device.

There's something going wrong.

So EncroChat says there's a bug in our encryption.

- [Narrator] To fix the problem,

EncroChat unwittingly does the worst thing it can do.

It sends another software update.

- French investigators were able to piggyback

on that security update with another piece of malware.

- [Narrator] Once EncroChat

realizes there's a problem with its system,

a security update is pushed out.

- So at this point we've almost got a game

between law enforcement and the criminals,

one doing something, the other one responding.

There's a kind of street warfare,

but it's being played out on the computers.

- [Narrator] The Digital Crime Unit once again strikes back.

This malware update instructs the phones

to secretly send copies of messages

before they're encrypted,

and after they've been decrypted,

direct to the police.

- All those messages,

all that information that's being sent

to be read by law enforcement officials.

- [Narrator] Faced with an uncrackable code,

the French team has achieved the seemingly impossible.

Without needing a digital key,

they can now read all of the secret messages

sent by EncroChat's criminal customers.

- Every planned hit, every planned kidnapping,

every planned drug deal.

They can just sit and watch in real time and take it all in.

- The National Crime Agency

has said that breaking the EncroChat network

was the same, in effect,

as cracking the war-time Enigma code.

- [Narrator] Instead of cracking EncroChat's

uncrackable encryption,

French police have found a way

to flip EncroChat in their favor.

Now, the once super-secure system is working for the police

against the criminals.

And those criminals have no idea

their incriminating messages

are now in the hands of the law.

- For about two months,

the police, sitting in their offices, in their HQ,

can sit and watch every message,

every kind of conversation that's going on.

- [Narrator] In the first month alone,

the French Digital Crime Team captures 70 million messages

from more than 32,000 phones in 121 countries.

Realizing the vast scale

of the criminal networks relying on EncroChat,

the French team joins forces

with other European law enforcement agencies.

- This goldmine of information is disseminated

to each country involved

and then to particular police forces within each country

to step in and take action.

- France, Sweden, Norway, Britain

were all able to share intelligence

and sit and watch these 100 million encrypted messages

between criminals going backwards and forwards in real time.

- These are criminals that law enforcement

have tried to deal with for many, many years.

And they have been able to operate on these devices

believing that law enforcement would never see

what those criminal exchanges were.

[suspenseful music]

- [Narrator] They don't know it yet,

but EncroChat and its users are cornered.

By the second week of June,

after multiple updates and fixes,

EncroChat's mysterious administrators

finally realized their supposedly bulletproof system

has been fatally compromised.

- In effect they're trapped.

They can't send out any more security updates.

But at the same time,

they can't instruct all their users

not to use EncroChat devices

because they'll be left without any communication system.

- [Narrator] On the night of June 12th, 2020,

EncroChat hits the self-destruct button.

- They contact all the users

and they tell them to power off their devices,

dispose of them, destroy them,

throw them away, don't use them again.

It's the end of EncroChat.

- [Narrator] But it's too late for EncroChat's customers.

Law enforcement agencies across Europe

now have everything they need to bring the criminals down.

The multinational, multi-agency task force

has unearthed a treasure trove of criminal activity

spanning Europe and beyond.

- They can join the dots between different organizations,

different sales that are happening,

what shipments are coming in,

who's gonna take a hit out on who.

It was the equivalent of having an undercover officer

within every single gang across the world, pretty much.

- [Narrator] But now those gangs know they've been watched,

which means law enforcement's cover is blown.

So the police have to hit the criminals hard and fast.

- Police are working at breakneck speed.

There are some people whose lives are at risk

because acts of violence are gonna be carried out.

At the same time,

there are drug deals that are being planned,

that they need to arrest those involved.

- The clock is ticking,

basically the police have to now move.

They've had their window of opportunity.

It's gonna be closed, they have to move on it.

[sirens wail]

- [Narrator] Within 24 hours,

police across Europe make their move.

[indiscriminate yelling]

- These raids were so fast,

so effective, and happened at the same time,

the criminals couldn't do anything.

And the realization that it has to do with EncroChat

would've installed absolute fear

because if you haven't been raided yet,

it's probably coming.

- Hundreds of arrests, drugs being seized,

money being recovered.

I've reported and researched on crime for about 25 years,

and this is certainly the biggest and most significant

organized crime operation that I've ever covered.

- [Narrator] Across Europe,

police forces arrest at least 1500 criminals

and seize millions of dollars worth of illegal items,

from guns to drugs.

[suspenseful music]

One of the most significant arrests is in Britain.

Just a few hours after EncroChat warns its users

their messages are no longer secure,

the piece of a quiet English suburb is shattered.

The modest street in northwest England

is home to dad of three, Thomas Maher.

- Thomas Maher owns a trucking company.

And behind that company,

he was trafficking serious Class A drugs,

cocaine, heroin, across Europe and Britain.

And EncroChat actually lifted the lid on him.

- [Narrator] Hidden behind the respectable facade

and EncroChat's encryption software,

Maher operated a vast drug smuggling network,

working with Colombian cartels

and some of Europe's most notorious organized crime gangs.

Police recover 10,000 messages sent via EncroChat

involving Maher during the period

he was under investigation.

- It emerges that Thomas Maher,

in one month alone in April 2020,

is coordinating shipments of cocaine

to and from the Netherlands worth over $2 million.

- [Narrator] And thanks EncroChat,

he coordinated all this from the comfort of his home.

- Thomas Maher's drug operation is actually a prime example

of how with the use of EncroChat,

he, as the sort of kingpin of his operation,

didn't even have to leave his sofa.

- [Narrator] But he certainly saw the profits.

- When police raided Thomas Maher's premises,

they found a fleet of luxury cars,

luxury watches, a map made out of bullets,

which must have been valued about 20,000 pounds.

- [Narrator] Maher is one of hundreds of people

arrested in the UK as a result of the EncroChat sting.

- These are not street-level criminals.

These are the kingpin of organized crime groups

living the lavish lifestyle

on the back of criminal proceeds,

who we have now been able to get to,

having never got as close to them before.

- [Narrator] So far, British police

have seized 106 EncroChat handsets,

77 guns, two tons of drugs,

28 million illicit pills, and nearly $70 million in cash.

The effect on the criminal community has been cataclysmic.

- One criminal spoke to me and he said

that people are just disappearing.

It's crazy, the supplies are being shut off.

It was like a house of cards that collapsed all at once

in June 2020.

[suspenseful music]

- [Narrator] Across Europe,

countless organized criminal gangs faced the same fate.

And this is just the beginning.

- The encrypted communication

gave an inside view on all kinds of criminal activities.

So all this will lead to more arrests, more seizures,

and dismantling of criminal networks.

[suspenseful music]

- [Narrator] Today, arrests continue to be made

as police unpick the web of connections

between organized criminal gangs.

But already the EncroChat investigation

is one of the largest and most sophisticated

police operations ever

in the fight against serious organized crime.

- Where there's crime,

there has to be secrecy,

and where you want secrecy,

there has to be a code,

and it's a game of cat and mouse

between the organized criminals and law enforcement.

[sirens wail]

- It seemed like an unbreakable system,

but police were able to get around the encryption

by turning the phones against themselves.

- That doesn't mean that organized crime is dead.

It's never dead,

but it has been a huge dent

for many criminal networks right across Europe.

- [Narrator] And it's all thanks to a code

that couldn't be cracked.

To the unseen software developers

and cyber crime specialists,

led by the incredible French team of investigators

who turned EncroChat's encryption against itself

and transformed the criminal's greatest asset

into their worst enemy.

[suspenseful music]

[chimes sound]