Crypto AG has been accused of rigging its machines in collusion with intelligence agencies such as the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and the United States National Security Agency (NSA), enabling such organisations to read the encrypted traffic produced by the machines.[2] Suspicions of this collusion were aroused in 1986 following US president Ronald Reagan's announcement on national television that, through interception of diplomatic communications between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, he had irrefutable evidence that Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya was behind the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing in which two US service personnel were killed and another fifty injured. President Reagan then ordered the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation. There is no conclusive evidence that there was an intercepted Libyan message.[citation needed]
Further evidence suggesting that the Crypto AG machines were compromised was revealed after the assassination of former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in 1991. On August 7, 1991, one day before Bakhtiar's body was discovered, the Iranian Intelligence Service transmitted a coded message to Iranian embassies, inquiring "Is Bakhtiar dead?" Western governments were able to decipher this transmission, causing Iranian suspicion to fall upon their Crypto AG equipment.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_i.html -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J. Oquendo SGFA, SGFE, C|EH, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP, CPT, RWSP, GREM "Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace" - Dalai Lama 42B0 5A53 6505 6638 44BB 3943 2BF7 D83F 210A 95AF http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2BF7D83F210A95AF _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list [email protected] http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
