International police forces have taken down an encrypted communication platform and arrested 51 people, marking a success for co-ordinated efforts to crack down on anonymous messaging services used by criminal groups. FT: Europol and law enforcement agencies from nine countries dismantled Ghost [non-paywalled source], an online platform which used three different encryption standards and allowed users to destroy all messages by sending a specific code, Europol announced on Wednesday. The crackdown is the latest operation by international agencies to decode encrypted messaging services used by criminals to manage their international operations, following the takedown of platforms such as EncroChat and Sky ECC in recent years. [...] McLean said Ghost was administered by a 32-year-old man from Australia, one of the operation's principal targets. As a result of the decryption operation, where officers broke the app's code so they could read users' messages, the death or injury of as many as 50 people could have been prevented, McLean said.

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