Aronnax, the European platform to better identify cybercriminals

French newspaper Le Monde recently revealed the launch, in early summer of 2023, of Aronnax, a European platform for sharing evidence left by cybercriminals online. Its goal is to make it easier to identify cybercrime perpetrators by gathering data retrieved by German, Estonian, French and Romanian law enforcement.

Aronnax’s sponsor is the European Commission’s DG Home, which has tasked the Civipol government corporation, a contractor of the French Ministry of Interior, to develop the platform. In order to do so, DG Home has granted the company a one-million-euro subsidy from its internal security budget.

“Thanks to this innovative tool, investigators will be able to more systematically track mistakes made by criminals. Once matched with the information given by criminals on (communication) channels, these mistakes will make it possible to identify and locate the culprits,” explains Civipol.

Aronnax will thus “allow cybersecurity centers to instantly verify information such as IP addresses, usernames and email addresses, at a European level.” The platform should be operational in 2025. It is designed for eventual use by other European law enforcement agencies. Its name is a reference to Pierre Aronnax, the narrator of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose role is to track great sea monsters.