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Subject: <nettime> CryptoGate, from CAQ
From: mf@mediafilter.org (MediaFilter)
Date: 24 Feb 1998 21:30:19 +0100

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Crypto AG: The NSA's Trojan Whore?

by Wayne Madsen

FOR AT LEAST HALF A CENTURY, THE US HAS BEEN
INTERCEPTING AND DECRYPTING THE TOP SECRET
DOCUMENTS OF MOST OF THE WORLD'S GOVERNMENTS

It may be the greatest intelligence scam of
the century: For decades, the US has routinely
intercepted and deciphered top secret
encrypted messages of 120 countries. These
nations had bought the world's most
sophisticated and supposedly secure
commercial encryption technology from
Crypto AG, a Swiss company that staked its
reputation and the security concerns of its
clients on its neutrality. The purchasing
nations, confident that their communications
were protected, sent messages from their
capitals to embassies, military missions, trade
offices, and espionage dens around the world,
via telex, radio, teletype, and facsimile. They
not only conducted sensitive albeit legal
business and diplomacy, but sometimes
strayed into criminal matters, issuing orders
to assassinate political leaders, bomb
commercial buildings, and engage in drug and
arms smuggling. All the while, because of a
secret agreement between the National
Security Agency (NSA) and Crypto AG, they might as
well have been hand delivering the message to Washington.

Their Crypto AG machines had been rigged so that when
customers used them, the random encryption key
could be automatically and clandestinely
transmitted with the enciphered message. NSA
analysts could read the message traffic as easily
as they could the morning newspaper.

[...]


>From CAQ #63 http://caq.com/cryptogate


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