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Many commenters here seem to believe that these charges are solely based on the fact that the guy sold cryptophones. That's very unlikely. The feds almost cert

by FDSGSG 6y ago

Many commenters here seem to believe that these charges are solely based on the fact that the guy sold cryptophones. That's very unlikely. The feds almost certainly have records of the CEO discussing drug trafficking.

yorwba 6y ago
Especially considering this part of the indictment: > ... on March 10, 2021, Europol announced that judicial and law enforcement authorities in Belgium, France and the Netherlands had wiretapped Sky Global’s servers and monitored hundreds of millions of messages by Sky Global’s users. The European investigation resulted in hundreds of arrests, the seizure of thousands of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine, hundreds of firearms, and millions of Euros.
- sbarre 6y ago
  That refers to the activities of the customers though, not the company itself. If it's end-to-end encrypted, then in theory the company is unaware of the content of the messages. That said, this feels like governments basically saying that even if you sell a service that is _technically_ legal, if the majority of your customers are using it for criminal activity, you're also going down.
  - uxp100 6y ago
    It seems to me that if it is possible to "wiretap the server" it was not really E2E encrypted. I don't know, maybe some messages were, some weren't. Certain users, certain types of messages, certain platforms.
sbarre 6y ago
If this is the case, then that's of course quite damning.. However, if you run a business that is making (according to the article) "hundreds of millions" selling handsets and subscriptions, why would you need to be involved in other very obviously illicit business? I think it's more likely that this guy is really a "freedom and privacy at all costs" guy who probably knows what his product is being used for, and doesn't care because for him that comes with the territory, and also because he's raking in the money. Even the whole "skyecc.eu is a fake version made by a disgruntled reseller" feels like a deniability smokescreen.. If you're smart enough to able to set up a service like SkyECC in the first place, you're smart enough to know that one day the cops/feds/govt are going to take a shot at you, so you'd have some kind of plan in place for that I would think. Whether it works or not, remains to be seen I guess.
- FDSGSG 6y ago
  >However, if you run a business that is making (according to the article) "hundreds of millions" selling handsets and subscriptions, why would you need to be involved in other very obviously illicit business? This wasn't always a huge business. I'm sure they became more careful after the incident with phantom secure. >I think it's more likely that this guy is really a "freedom and privacy at all costs" guy who probably knows what his product is being used for, and doesn't care because for him that comes with the territory, and also because he's raking in the money. Full disclosure: I work in this space, SkyECC was a competitor and I'm deeply familiar with their product. This guy is an opportunist and a liar promoting a very insecure product, constantly making false promises of security. He's made his money by exploiting the technical ineptitude of drug dealers. A "freedom and privacy at all costs" guy he is not. >If you're smart enough to able to set up a service like SkyECC in the first place, you're smart enough to know that one day the cops/feds/govt are going to take a shot at you, so you'd have some kind of plan in place for that I would think. You're clearly not very familiar with this space. It's rife with absolutely terrible products built by drug dealers who just hired a couple of developers from freelancer.com. SkyECCs sole focus was providing a polished user experience, not security. These clowns had their corporate active directory server (adsql.skyecc.com) exposed to the internet with RDP, SMB, LDAP all publicly accessible until it was seized a few days ago. They did nothing to harden their infrastructure after the Encrochat hack. I assure you they weren't prepared for the cops to come knocking.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    Fair enough, I appreciate the insider details, as I was indeed speculating.

by FDSGSG 6y ago

yorwba 6y ago

Especially considering this part of the indictment: > ... on March 10, 2021, Europol announced that judicial and law enforcement authorities in Belgium, France and the Netherlands had wiretapped Sky Global’s servers and monitored hundreds of millions of messages by Sky Global’s users. The European investigation resulted in hundreds of arrests, the seizure of thousands of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine, hundreds of firearms, and millions of Euros.

sbarre 6y ago
That refers to the activities of the customers though, not the company itself. If it's end-to-end encrypted, then in theory the company is unaware of the content of the messages. That said, this feels like governments basically saying that even if you sell a service that is _technically_ legal, if the majority of your customers are using it for criminal activity, you're also going down.
- uxp100 6y ago
  It seems to me that if it is possible to "wiretap the server" it was not really E2E encrypted. I don't know, maybe some messages were, some weren't. Certain users, certain types of messages, certain platforms.

sbarre 6y ago

If this is the case, then that's of course quite damning.. However, if you run a business that is making (according to the article) "hundreds of millions" selling handsets and subscriptions, why would you need to be involved in other very obviously illicit business? I think it's more likely that this guy is really a "freedom and privacy at all costs" guy who probably knows what his product is being used for, and doesn't care because for him that comes with the territory, and also because he's raking in the money. Even the whole "skyecc.eu is a fake version made by a disgruntled reseller" feels like a deniability smokescreen.. If you're smart enough to able to set up a service like SkyECC in the first place, you're smart enough to know that one day the cops/feds/govt are going to take a shot at you, so you'd have some kind of plan in place for that I would think. Whether it works or not, remains to be seen I guess.

FDSGSG 6y ago
>However, if you run a business that is making (according to the article) "hundreds of millions" selling handsets and subscriptions, why would you need to be involved in other very obviously illicit business? This wasn't always a huge business. I'm sure they became more careful after the incident with phantom secure. >I think it's more likely that this guy is really a "freedom and privacy at all costs" guy who probably knows what his product is being used for, and doesn't care because for him that comes with the territory, and also because he's raking in the money. Full disclosure: I work in this space, SkyECC was a competitor and I'm deeply familiar with their product. This guy is an opportunist and a liar promoting a very insecure product, constantly making false promises of security. He's made his money by exploiting the technical ineptitude of drug dealers. A "freedom and privacy at all costs" guy he is not. >If you're smart enough to able to set up a service like SkyECC in the first place, you're smart enough to know that one day the cops/feds/govt are going to take a shot at you, so you'd have some kind of plan in place for that I would think. You're clearly not very familiar with this space. It's rife with absolutely terrible products built by drug dealers who just hired a couple of developers from freelancer.com. SkyECCs sole focus was providing a polished user experience, not security. These clowns had their corporate active directory server (adsql.skyecc.com) exposed to the internet with RDP, SMB, LDAP all publicly accessible until it was seized a few days ago. They did nothing to harden their infrastructure after the Encrochat hack. I assure you they weren't prepared for the cops to come knocking.
- sbarre 6y ago
  Fair enough, I appreciate the insider details, as I was indeed speculating.