Hacking smartphones for the Ministry of Internal Affairs

As CNews found out, the divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs began in 2021 with the launch of the next standard in content, but the largest in volume, purchases of hardware and software systems for retrieving, researching and analyzing data from mobile devices.

In particular, on February 16, 2021, a tender for the acquisition of 11 such complexes was announced by the North-Western District Department of Procurement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The starting price of the lot was RUB 16.8 million. Applications from applicants are accepted until March 1.

An even larger tender - for the purchase of 16 complexes on February 20, 2021, was announced by the Volga District Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' logistics. The starting price of the lot was 24.4 million rubles. Applications from applicants are accepted until March 2.

An analysis of the public procurement website shows that various departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs have been regularly purchasing the complexes under consideration since April 2019, but the acquisitions have never been so large. Throughout 2019, the police purchased one set per procedure. In 2020, the appetites of the security officials increased, but even the Central District Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs limited itself to purchasing five complexes with a starting contract price of 7.3 million rubles.

Departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs sharply increased the volume of purchases of agro-industrial complex for hacking smartphones
It is noteworthy that the aforementioned North-West and Volga Administrations have already purchased complexes for hacking smartphones in 2020 - three and two, respectively. The executor of the contracts for the tenders already played out was mainly the Lan-project company, which, as a rule, went to the auction alone.

At the time of the publication of this publication, the North-West Directorate could not answer the CNews question about the reasons for the additional purchase of equipment. The telephone number of the Volga Department was unavailable during the preparation of the material; e-mail is not listed on the organization's website.

Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia at the time of the publication of the publication could not answer the question of CNews about the number of complexes planned for purchase by the departments of the Ministry in 2021 and the amount of funds allocated for this.

What complexes are purchased

Terms of reference for all purchases under consideration by the Ministry of Internal Affairs are of the same type. The purchased complexes are intended for copying information, including hidden and deleted data, from mobile communication devices running on Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, WindowsMobile, WindowsPhone, etc.

The TK states that the complexes should be able to detect and decode the history of messages sent and received by software clients of instant messaging systems Skype, ICQ, WhatsApp, etc., as well as clients of social networks Twitter and Facebook.

It is understood that the equipment will be foreign. In all purchases, the Ministry of Internal Affairs justifies the impossibility of giving priority to the Russian "hardware" from the register of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, due to the fact that it does not contain products corresponding to the same class (functional purpose) as the solutions planned for the purchase.

The register does not contain information on radio-electronic products corresponding to the same class (functional purpose) of radio-electronic products as the radio-electronic products planned for purchase.

The complex should be a portable laptop with a disk system of one or more SSD-drives, with a pre-installed OS. The package must include a mouse, a carrying bag, an adapter for connecting mobile devices equipped with: built-in USB interfaces, a serial port with an RJ-45 connector, and a Bluetooth wireless network adapter. Also, the kit should include at least 30 cables and attachments for connecting cell phones and pocket PCs.

As for the software, the complex should be equipped with a set of forensic software for copying (retrieving) information from mobile devices, for converting so-called memory dumps and for viewing and analyzing reports on the research results.

With the help of the complexes, the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs intend to extract the contents of the memory of mobile devices at a logical level, including the contents of the phone book, text (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) messages, logs of incoming, outgoing and missed calls, photo images, video recordings, audio recordings and voice notes, and See also data from the SIM card.

Also, the police are going to extract the structure of the file system of mobile phones, including taking into account hidden and system files, physically (bit by bit) extract information from internal memory modules and external drives, with the ability to restore deleted data and save all received information to a binary file, as well as calculation control values ​​of the hash functions of the resulting file.

In addition, the complex should make it possible to extract information from portable navigation GPS devices, user and identification information from SIM cards and clone identification information (ICCID, IMSI) from smart cards to specialized smart cards.