DEF CON 32 - Inside the FBI’s Secret Encrypted Phone Company ‘Anom’ - Joseph Cox

Joseph Cox details the technical inner workings and backdoor implementation of Anom, an encrypted messaging network secretly run by the FBI.

In 2018, a secure communications app called Anom started to gain popularity among organized criminals. Soon, top tier drug traffickers were using it all over the world. Because they thought their messages were secure, smugglers and hitmen coordinated high stakes crimes across the platform. But Anom had a secret: it was secretly run by the FBI. For years Joseph Cox has investigated the inside story of Anom, speaking to people who coded the app, those who sold it, criminals who chatted across it, and the FBI agents who surreptitiously managed it. This new talk, building on details from his recent book DARK WIRE, will include never-before-published technical details on how the Anom network functioned, how the backdoor itself worked, and how Anom grew to such a size that the FBI started to lose control of its own creation. It will also reflect on how police have entered a new phase of compromising entire encrypted phone networks, with little to no debate from the public, and provide critical insight on what really happens when authorities introduce a backdoor into a telecommunications product.