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Swiss government files criminal complaint over Crypto AG scandal involving CIA
- LatteLazy 7y agoAfter WW2 we (brits) sold enigma machines to the countries gaining independence from the empire and never mentioned we could read everything they were used to communicate. This is why no one should outsource vital functions to competitors... This should be embarrassing for the Swiss intelligence services whose job it was to detect and prevent these sorts of shenanigans... Also, have I misunderstood? The criminal case should be against the company executives surely, not "persons unknown". Or is that just to include whoever bribed them?
- andreasley 7y ago> This should be embarrassing for the Swiss intelligence services whose job it was to detect and prevent these sorts of shenanigans... Some alledge that the NDB/FIS (Federal Intelligence Service) knew about the operation. [1] > The criminal case should be against the company executives surely, not "persons unknown". At this point, it is not known who was involved in what way exactly. Some executives? Definitely. All executives? Maybe not. A former employee believes that only 2-3 executives knew about the whole scheme and maybe 10-15 technicians put two and two together or suspected something. [2] [1] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/geheimdienstaffaere-cryptoleaks-schweizer-helfer-der-cia-was-wusste-villiger https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/geheimdienstaffaere-cryptole... (german) [2] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/17-jahre-bei-der-crypto-ag-ex-mitarbeiter-man-konnte-schon-eins-und-eins-zusammenzaehlen https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/17-jahre-bei-der-crypto-ag-e... (german)
- markus_zhang 7y agotracking the history of CIA black operations e.g. Operation Gladio in Europe in the cold war, I'm almost sure that someone from the Swiss side knew this from the beginning.
- cognaitiv 7y agoOperation Gladio is the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that was planned by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO, for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest in Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
- farseer 7y agoI don't think anyone believes that the Swiss didn't know.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago> The criminal case should be against the company executives surely, not "persons unknown" I don't know about Switzerland, but in some European countries this enables a judge to be designated to carry out a formal investigation and to then decide who to specifically go after. In addition, filing a complaint against a specific person opens you to be sued back if that person is then shown to have done nothing wrong. This means that it is very common for criminal complaints to be initially filed against "persons unknown".
- 101404 7y agoThis case should be quoted in every discussion about 5G mobile equipment here in Europe.
- Craighead 7y agoIt will only be used in anti-US sentiments and never anti-SINO
- fh973 7y agoTowards which conclusion? Backdoors are common practice and so we have to assume their existance in foreign equipment? Or we did it first, so let's give the others a chance to deliver backdoors to us?
- 101404 7y agoTo maintain control over critical communication technology.
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y agoThe problem is that 5g wasn't designed to be secure against malicious carriers & governments. It could have been, and modern cryptographic protocols used over it can be. The assumption that you can trust communications infrastructure is outdated. It must not matter if an adversary has back doored a router or cell tower or similar to send copies of all traffic to them, since the data should be entirely encrypted (except for some minimal routing information). The 3GPP designed the 5G standards to allow back doors, so we get back doors.
- 101404 7y agoWhat if the same company also provides the cellphones and computers used to do the encryption of the data being sent?
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
- rolltiide 7y agoProtip: Nobody knows who owns any business entity, if they dont want you to know. Here German intelligence and US intelligence owned a Swedish entity. Thats how free trade works.
- varjag 7y agoSwiss.
- rolltiide 7y agoWhoops too late to edit
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chinathrow 7y agoThat has nothing to do with free trade - it's about privately held stocks. Which is a worldwide thing.
- rolltiide 7y agoYes but no capital controls on who can own what and where
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- infinity0 7y agoIn the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter that you can read everyone's messages when your economy is growing at 1%, the economy of your supposed "friend" that you're selling the messages to is growing at 2%, and the economy of the people whose messages you're reading is growing at 6-7%. Maybe they should have used the money to develop 5G instead, lol. > Switzerland’s Prime Minister, Simonetta Sommaruga For a supposed website about intelligence, strange of them to use the phrase "Prime Minister" to describe the President of Switzerland (who actually is just a figurehead with the same power as the other members of the 7-member Federal Council).
- Mvandenbergh 7y agoI'm not sure how GDP growth is relevant here, especially when those higher growth rates are in countries with much lower base GDPs. GDP growth is not an eternal structural characteristic of an economy and there is no reason to believe that it will not slow down as GDP/capita converges.
- infinity0 7y ago"We're already ahead, we don't need to run any faster, we'll use our energy to do pointless things like spy on everyone instead". Don't let me stop you thinking that but I'll keep running faster, thanks.
- 2Crisp 7y agoThe idea that less developed economies have much faster potential growth is well studied in economics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_(economics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_(economics) I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
- infinity0 7y agoThe article itself contains a lot of nuances and exceptions, and makes no pretense at trying to predict the future, but you're treating it as if it inevitably predicts an outcome as time tends towards infinity. You might want to better understand the difference between a non-predictive theory meant as a guide for future research, vs reality, an actual future, and a truly predictive theory. That said, don't let me stop you from believing what you want to believe. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what my point is, but if your salary depends on you not understanding it, that's OK too.
- farseer 7y agoWhy now, just to save face? Its not like people still buy cryptography equipment from the Swiss. They compromised various clients, including Iraq during the first gulf war.
- markus_zhang 7y agoMaybe that's exactly the reason?
- Shivetya 7y agoI expect it is to imply they had no cooperation with the CIA as far as they know with their own Intelligence agency. there is a good chance the Swiss intelligent apparatus knew what was going on so if this complaint vanishes or settles quietly we will know what is up
- yawniek 7y agoi'm not really sure how much of a "conspiracy" is left here if even the former head of the BND admitted it...
- stiray 7y agoJust a simple thought experiment... In light of those events, would you as, for instance, CIA, create your Certificate Authority and offer free certificates for servers, simplifying deployment to be as simple to use as possible? ;) (I am just looking into certificate pinning, but CA can generate another certificate or wildcarded certificate that client trusts, which enables mitm, I am doing it all the time on https proxy (http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/config/ssl_bump/ http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/config/ssl_bump/). This way you can decrypt traffic - redirect traffic to your server and impersonate the right one while proxying data from original server)
- belltaco 7y agoCAs cannot decrypt SSL traffic, or am I missing something.
- ceejayoz 7y agoCAs can issue a new cert for state-run MITM attacks.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoHow issuing free certificates makes it more probable?
- chopin 7y agoYou get a root certificate on all machines.
- natpalmer1776 7y agoTo expand on this, and illustrate the dangers of speculation, would you not also establish a legitimate Certificate Authority when your lab geeks realized how critical they would or could someday be, then use your industry reputation to sell certificates like any other company in the industry?
- madengr 7y agoThis was publicly known over 25 years ago. There was a 60 Minutes piece in it in the early 90’s. Why are they up in arms about it now?
- andreasley 7y agoThat's a great question. When swiss newspapers reported on it in 1994, the cold war was still present in the minds of my fellow citizens and the US was seen as an ally and friend, so the general public probably just didn't consider it to be that important if the CIA maybe bugged some conversations. Also, the swiss government "preferred not to know anything" and obstructed investigations, despite some employees of Crypto AG coming forward with information to the federal police. The world (or rather our view of it) is quite different today. Hidden data collection is a popular topic and it's harder to pretend that there are only friends in the west and only enemies in the east. It's also easier to share information worldwide and media coverage was much larger this time.
- alltakendamned 7y agoI wonder what the outcome can be of filing a criminal complaint like this? What do they hope to achieve? I can't imagine anyone or any nation will ever be brought to justice over this ?
- markus_zhang 7y agoI think it's more of a gesture. There was also a similar action by the European Parliament against Operation Gladio back in 1990, which was also a gesture.
- archi42 7y agoExactly. If this wasn't persecuted the message would be "yeah, screw people over and ruin the swiss reputation, we don't really care". Now even if the evidence isn't court-proof, or it's not possible to attach it to specific people, it still shows that things like this won't be ignored. If I was responsible for selling rigged encryption equipment, I'd be wary that this might backfire on me - even in a decade or two.
- sfifs 7y agoIf they can identify people involved, they can issue arrest warrants and a red corner notice via Interpol. That can make travel very difficult for the people involved and they'll essentially be unable to leave their own countries without risk of arrest. They won't realistically ever be able to prosecute, but they can make life a bit uncomfortable as a gesture. And if relatives or friends of those people vacation in Switzerland, they can always pull them in for "questioning about a suspect" as another form of harassment. Small countries can never threaten a big state realistically, however they have the ability to harrass people who work for these big states in the hope of discouraging future action
- cryptonector 7y agoThis has been public knowledge for decades.
- ta999999171 7y ago"Public"? It was trending on Instagram and MTV/TLC?
- ur-whale 7y agoFiles criminal complaints in which jurisdiction? Switzerland? If so, what do they hope to gain from it?