Encryption nothing: the terrorists in Paris simply used disposable phones

New details have emerged on how the terrorist attacks in Paris last November. Reported by the New York Times, these reveal that the attackers have used common technologies, not too sophisticated, to avoid being tracked or identified by the Parisian police forces. Among these simple handsets disposable sneak effectively from the radar of the intelligence services. No encryption or specific technologies, as we are often mistakenly led to believe.

The three team in Paris were "relatively disciplined," says the source. Representatives of the various groups were using only new mobile phones that they would shortly thereafter thrown away. Many of the devices are only activated a few minutes before the terrorist attacks in the French capital, or even confiscated from the victims themselves. The article reported by the NY Times reveals many details of the modus operandi of terrorists, explaining how many of the phones were used only briefly in the few hours that preceded the attacks.

"A surveillance camera showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants as he walked out of the stadium talking through an activated cell phone less than an hour before the detonation of the explosive vest," writes the NY Times citing a police report about 55 pages. Investigators have also found a Samsung phone in a basket of their garbage near the Bataclan theater, the place where there was the bloodiest attack of Paris last November.

The device used a Belgian SIM that was used only on the day before the attack, in which he had been contacted by a Belgian user does not yet identified. Police found several phones throwaway: "Wherever they went the attackers left behind their cell disposable, even in Bobigny, in a rented villa on behalf of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When authorities entered the building found two phones never again used in the original packaging. " And so in other places inspected and sieved.

The most amazing part, according to the NY Times, is that in none of the phones found by the authorities were recovered messages or e-mail. The attackers know of course that can be monitored or tracked, and use other methods to avoid being identified. But not complex and artificial methods, such as encryption or other super-safe technologies, the attackers are using much more mundane tools and, for this reason, much more difficult to exploit by third parties. How, precisely, disposable phones not connected to the Internet.

And is a method that works, as they were able to ascertain the authorities responsible for the investigation on the case. We can move many considerations, but the one that comes easiest to do is related to government requests (English, US, for example) to make weaker encryption algorithms to uncover the most private details of members of terrorist organizations. It is required that could get devastating effects in other areas, but did not make it possible to discover a lot more than what we already know in terms of protection from possible attacks.

The report cited by The New York Times is a brilliant demonstration of a reality that could occur if the governments they had won the battle still ongoing against "strong encryption." But there are still some doubts about the use of encryption by terrorists in the organization of French attacks. Perhaps you were found some traces of protected files on a laptop, but it is still very likely that the role of cryptography was not so decisive in the attacks in November, or that terrorists are so naive as to leave such sensitive information in the hands of the investigators .