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Anom: when the FBI becomes a smartphone vendor

12.7.2021

Translation: Veronica Bielawski

The FBI and its international partners have arrested hundreds of people with the help of a supposedly secure Android app. The operation was so successful that phones with entire FBI Android versions were also put in circulation.

«Operation Trojan Shield» was an investigative operation of the FBI. Its goal was to identify organised crime groups and to ultimately arrest the criminals – Italian mobsters and biker gangs, among others. The operation was a success: according to declassified court documents, hundreds of arrests were made across 18 countries. The successful completion of the operation was communicated in June. But that doesn’t mark the end of this matter. Further details have been made public, such as the existence of a smartphone being sold solely for the purpose of espionage.

Smartphones were key to the investigation; it was the seemingly secure messaging app «Anom» that put investigators on the trail of the gangsters.

The FBI had added a master key to Anom, allowing law enforcement to access all encrypted messages.

A phone and an app

It is not known how and when the phone – since known as the «Anom Phone» – was launched. The tech magazine Motherboard obtained one of these phones – a Google Pixel 4a with a custom ROM called ArcaneOS installed. Daniel Micay, lead developer of the privacy-focused Android distro GrapheneOS, is aware of a Google Pixel 3a also running ArcaneOS.

Smartphones

Google Pixel 4a

128 GB, Just Black, 5.80", Single SIM, 4G

Disabling location tracking is apparently not possible on ArcaneOS. And according to xdadevelopers, Google Mobile Services isn’t installed either. This is probably because Google doesn’t just give everyone permission to use their services.

ArcaneOS has some nice features that actually serve security purposes:

The numbers in the lock screen number pad are arranged randomly. This means an attacker can’t simply memorise the pattern or use the fingerprint marks left on the screen to unlock the phone.
The status bar at the top of the screen contains an option that resets the phone.
A PIN can be set that deletes all content on the phone.
The phone is wiped when not connected to the Internet for a certain period of time.
The calculator app is supposed to open chat when you enter a specific calculation.

Viral underground

In 2018, Phantom Secure, a predecessor to Anom, was taken off the market after its CEO was arrested. The Canadian company had provided secure software for Blackberry devices. And the underground was grateful for it.

The resulting vacuum was then used by the FBI and its international partners to establish the Anom app. By the end of Operation Trojan Shield, the FBI had sifted through 20 million messages on 11,800 devices across 90 countries. About 9,000 of these devices are believed to still be active. The app had made its first rounds thanks to a kind of influencer campaign – a «source» from the FBI had apparently popularised the app within his criminal circles. In Australia, public beta testing brought the app to criminals.

According to Anom’s own Twitter profile, it was a Swiss company.

But the people behind Anom were, in fact, a group of investigators posing as a company. Andrew Young, a former employee of the U.S. Department of Justice, tells Motherboard that Anom was actually set up like a real business – including tech support, business competition, protection against hackers and all.

The app has since disappeared from the Google Play Store, but it can still be found on third-party app stores like APKPure.

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Dominik Bärlocher

Senior Editor

dominik.baerlocher@digitecgalaxus.ch

Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.

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Anom: when the FBI becomes a smartphone vendor

A phone and an app

Viral underground

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