City, December 4, 2024 – Detectives from a joint investigation team have successfully dismantled the Matrix chat service, a secure messaging platform favored by criminals, following an operation involving Lithuanian and Spanish police.
The operation, which began in September, allowed authorities to intercept and read millions of messages exchanged on the Matrix platform. Eurojust, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, reported that the founders of Matrix believed their service was more secure than previous applications used by criminal organizations.
This breakthrough comes three years after law enforcement agencies managed to crack the Encrochat and SkyECC networks. Eurojust noted that Matrix’s infrastructure was technically more complex, utilizing over 40 servers across various countries, with the primary servers located in France and Germany.
Notably, the operation was prompted by the discovery of new encryption tools following the murder of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries in July 2021. The police found this software on a Google Pixel phone in the getaway vehicle of the shooter. Investigators revealed that access to the Matrix service was invitation-only, and they were able to intercept and decipher over 2.3 million messages in 33 different languages, linking them to serious crimes such as international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering.
The intelligence community has long warned about the dangers of encryption technologies for law enforcement. In 2016, Michael Rogers, then-director of the NSA, highlighted how such systems hindered the ability to prevent terrorist attacks, referencing the November 2015 Paris massacre as a case where crucial insights were missed.
The closure of the Matrix service underscores ongoing challenges in combating organized crime and the continuous evolution of secure communication technologies used by criminals.
