Paris terrorists used burner phones, not encryption, to evade detection

New details of the Paris attacks completed closing November reveal that it changed into the consistent use of pay as you go burner phones, not encryption, that helped hold the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence offerings.

As an editorial in the the big apple instances reports: "the three teams in Paris have been relatively disciplined. They used handiest new phones that they could then discard, which includes numerous activated minutes earlier than the assaults, or phones seized from their sufferers."

the item is going on to provide more info of the way some phones have been used most effective very briefly within the hours main as much as the attacks. For instance: "safety digicam footage confirmed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, speaking on a mobile phone. The telephone became activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest." The information come from a 55-web page record compiled by means of the French antiterrorism police for France’s interior Ministry.

Outside the Bataclan theater venue, the investigators determined a Samsung telephone in a dustbin: "It had a Belgian SIM card that were in use handiest because the day earlier than the attack. The telephone had called simply an additional variety—belonging to an unidentified consumer in Belgium."

As police pieced together the movements of the attackers, they found but greater burner phones: "everywhere they went, the attackers left at the back of their throwaway telephones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented within the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. While the brigade charged with sweeping the area arrived, it determined two unused mobile phones nonetheless internal their packing containers." At every other vicinity used by one of the terrorists, the police located dozens of unused burner phones "nevertheless of their wrappers."

as the the big apple times says, one of the maximum striking components of the phones is that no longer a single e-mail or on line chat message from the attackers changed into found on them. That appears to be further proof that they knew such communications had been routinely monitored by means of intelligence companies. However rather than seeking to keep away from discovery via the usage of encryption—which would in itself have drawn attention to their money owed—they seem to have stopped the use of the net as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner telephones.