Dutch & French police take down Matrix encrypted chat app; 2.3 million messages captured

Dutch and French authorities have cracked another encrypted communication service that criminals allegedly used to communicate with each other. The service, named Matrix, was the successor to previously cracked services such as ANOM, Sky ECC, and EncroChat. Police were able to intercept over 2.3 million messages and were able to read along with conversations for months.

The police were made aware of the service after the murder of Peter R. de Vries in July 2021. A phone was found in the getaway car with the encrypted messaging service on it.

The messages that were intercepted are linked to serious crimes such as “ international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering,” according to a statement by Interpol.

Two suspects were arrested at the Netherlands' request in Marbella, Spain. One of them is allegedly the owner of the service, a 52-year-old man from Lithuania. A 30-year-old from the Netherlands was also arrested. He used the service and is also suspected of international cocaine trafficking in 2020.

In addition, six houses were searched in Spain, and a villa worth 15 million euros was seized. Half a million euros in cryptocurrency and 145,000 euros in cash were also seized. Furthermore, four vehicles and more than 970 telephones were taken. Searches were also carried out at six locations in Lithuania.

Dutch police said the Matrix app was targeted along with similar encrypted services known by the names Mactrix, Totalsex, X-quantum and Q-Safe. The investigation did not spotlight the similarly-named Matrix open source communication protocol.

The police had already taken down various comparable services in the past. In 2016, servers belonging to Ennetcom in Canada were seized. This was followed by PGP-SAFE, IronChat, and EncroChat.

Investigate services made a big impact when they took down SKY ECC, a service with 70,000 users, 11,000 of those being Dutch citizens, in 2021. The services ANOM and Ghost were also taken down after this.

Police say that Matrix was more complex than its predecessors and more international. Detectives saw messages in 33 languages during the investigation. The service was controlled from Spain, while most users were in Southern Europe.

Matrix’s infrastructure consisted of more than 40 servers, with the most important of these being in France and Germany.

Detectives from the Netherlands, France, Lithuania, Italy, and Spain took part in the investigation.