Eurocops take down 'secure' criminal chat system known as Matrix

French and Dutch police have taken down the Matrix chat app, which was designed by criminals for criminals to be a secure encrypted messaging tool.

Cops in the Netherlands discovered the existence of Matrix while investigating the 2021 murder of crime reporter Peter de Vries, who was looking into the Moroccan mafia at the time. When the app's central servers were found to be in France, the Dutch and French plod formed a joint task force and together they managed to compromise the messaging system and read crooks' conversations. How that infiltration was achieved has not yet been publicly explained or divulged.

According to Europol, the app was significantly more advanced than other such criminal chat software. It was invitation-only, strongly end-to-end encrypted, and users would have to pay between €1,300 and €1,600 ($1,400 to $1,700) for a six-month subscription.

"It was soon clear that the infrastructure of this platform was technically more complex than previous platforms such as Sky ECC and EncroChat," Europol explained Tuesday. "The founders were convinced that the service was superior and more secure than previous applications used by criminals."

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