"Supernerds" working within the Barton bunker of the Australian Federal Police were able to covertly insert surveillance coding into over-the-air updates to an encrypted commercial app used extensively by organised crime, culminating in dozens of arrest around the country on Tuesday.
Over 700 federal police executed 71 search warrants in the early hours of Tuesday morning and provided support during two days of action across four Australian states and territories.
Officers seized 205kg of illicit drugs, 25 weapons and $1.2 million of cash during the raids.
The operational trigger was pulled on Tuesday after Operation Kraken was set up two years ago.
As the raids flowed out, police have arrested 38 people including the 32-year-old Sydney man who developed the app known as "Ghost", and then actively marketed it to criminal networks as an unbreakable encrypted communications network.
Caught up in the sting are members of the Hells Angels, Comancheros and Bandidos bikes gangs as well as criminal networks with known illicit drug importation connections with Korea, the Middle East and southern Europe.
It is understood that federal police were first alerted to Australian connection to the app when French police arrested a suspect in 2021.
The AFP then infiltrated the Ghost app as the updates were approved by those who had installed it, giving police access to 125,000 messages sent by users.
In an ABC interview, AFP Commander Paula Hudson said police "will be alleging that this platform is solely being used for criminality and serious organised crime, drug trafficking, drug importation, tobacco trafficking, firearms trafficking, and money laundering".
Operation Kraken is the second time in recent years that the AFP have used in-house expertise to imbed themselves into the communications networks of criminal gangs.
For years, the AFP's Operation Ironside had been behind the 'viral' adoption of what criminal gangs thought was an end-to-end encrypted phone and text service. However, federal police had a "doorway" into the Anom app, and officers could hear and see every communication.
The trigger on that operation was pulled in June 2021, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
