Security News > 2020 > February > US, German Spies Plundered Global Secrets Via Swiss Encryption Firm: Report
US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company, Crypto AG, US, German and Swiss media reported Tuesday.
Together they rigged Crypto's equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government's messages, according to reports by the Washington Post, German television ZTE and Swiss state media SRF. - 'Coup of the century' -.
Citing a classified internal CIA history of what was originally called operation "Thesaurus" and later "Rubicon," the reports said that in the 1980s the harvest from the Crypto machines supplied roughly 40 percent of all the foreign communications US codebreakers processed for intelligence.
With online technology, including advanced encryption apps, now more powerful than the kind of machines that Crypto AG made, the CIA finally sold the company in 2018, the Post reported.
Carolina Bohren, a Swiss Defense Ministry spokeswoman, said the government was informed of the Crypto AG case last November and has named a retired federal judge to investigate.