[Cryptography] Swiss helped with CIA spying

[Dave Horsfall]

So runs the headline in
http://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/swiss-investigate-report-that-firm-helped-cia-crack-top-secret-messages-20200212-p53zwl.html

``Swiss investigate report that firm helped CIA crack top-secret messages

Zurich: Switzerland is probing news reports that the US Central 
Intelligence Agency and West Germany's spy service used a Swiss company's 
encryption technology to covertly crack other nations' top-secret 
messages, the Swiss defence ministry said.

The company, called Crypto AG, sold code-making equipment to Iran, Latin 
American nations, India, Pakistan and dozens of other countries. The 
technology was modified to let the CIA and Germany's BND break codes, the 
Washington Post reported along with German and Swiss broadcasters ZDF and 
SRF.''


Old news for some, but it's the first time that I've seen it acknowledged 
in the major media; this would be the Enigma, of course.  I particularly 
liked the statement "Crypto sold rigged systems..."; they were not rigged, 
but merely broken (in a crypto sense); I guess journos wouldn't understand 
that.

-- Dave