[Cryptography] Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices

[Stephan Neuhaus]

On 11/26/20 9:48 PM, iang wrote:
> https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/latest-news/second-swiss-firm-allegedly-sold-encrypted-spying-devices/46186432 
> 
> 
> Swiss public television, SRF, has found a second company besides Crypto 
> AG was involved in manufacturing manipulated devices allegedly used for 
> spying by foreign intelligence.

I can confirm that this is mainline news in Switzerland (even though it 
is shadowed by news about its terrible handling of the Corona crisis). 
The Tagesanzeiger had a long article about this, and from what I 
remember about that article, they were somewhat confused about Ueli 
Maurer's role in vetting Onmisec's crypto algorithms.

 From memory (which may or may not be faulty):

It seems that Omnisec gave the impression that their productss had been 
vetted by Maurer, an ETH professor and renowned cryptographer. Maurer 
denies this, saying that because of scientific prudence he would never 
vet products that he didn't own. He says that his role was more that of 
a "second opinion". But then the Tagesanzeiger writes that "Omnisec 
disputes this, claiming that Maurer had "attacked" their algorithm". 
(Quote from memory, translation mine.)

I honestly don't see a contradiction here. You can, as part of a second 
opinion, try a few attacks on the crypto, and report that these failed. 
But that is far from a successful vetting of the algorithm or product.

Fun,

Stephan