Crypto AG was controlled by NSA and BND

[AnonEMouse]

Anyone heard about Crypto AG? Evidently they sold cryptographic devices to governments worldwide with backdoors for the NSA and BND (Germany).

I suspect this is a reason why the US is deathly afraid of Huawei. It only takes one party using compromised equipment to compromise everybody on the channel.

Also makes me wonder how secure anything really is. Is the very public fight between Apple and the US government real or is it just cover to lull the world into thinking their phones are secure? We might find out in another 60 years.

Some background here with links to news articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

"Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security. It was secretly jointly owned by the American CIA and West German intelligence agency BND from 1970 until about 1993, with the CIA continuing as sole owner until about 2018."

 

[davebarnes]

Cia ≠ nsa

 

[Dalmore]

Reminds me of the sudden disappearance of TrueCrypt and the developer's claim that "bitlocker" was good enough. TrueCrypt is the only mass storage encryption solution to have been fully audited, any other solution, Apple, Microsoft, etc, could have numerous backdoor for the highest bidder or the biggest stick.

 

[braumeister]

NSA: At last, a government agency that actually listens to you.

 

[AnonEMouse]

Both NSA and CIA had fingers in the pie - refer to article.

Also, VeraCrypt kinda took over for TrueCrypt. The source code is open and freely available - anyone care to audit it?

 

[target2019]

Reminds me of the sudden disappearance of TrueCrypt and the developer's claim that "bitlocker" was good enough. TrueCrypt is the only mass storage encryption solution to have been fully audited, any other solution, Apple, Microsoft, etc, could have numerous backdoor for the highest bidder or the biggest stick.

Are you suggesting TrueCrypt is still a good solution? Not being critical, just wondering.

 

[Dalmore]

Are you suggesting TrueCrypt is still a good solution? Not being critical, just wondering.

TrueCrypt in and of itself is a great solution, however, it was written prior to windows 10, and depending on your OS could be showing some compatibility issues.

As mentioned in another post, VeraCrypt is an excellent fork of TrueCrypt and is very stable. However, it has not undergone the same rigorous audit that TrueCrypt has, so you have to trust that they stayed true to the original code. Personally, I use VeraCrypt.

 

[zinger1457]

Reminds me of the sudden disappearance of TrueCrypt and the developer's claim that "bitlocker" was good enough. TrueCrypt is the only mass storage encryption solution to have been fully audited, any other solution, Apple, Microsoft, etc, could have numerous backdoor for the highest bidder or the biggest stick.

That may be true, maybe not, but I'm fairly certain that anyone with the resources/skills to overcome Apple's and Microsoft's encryption methods won't be wasting their time on me, plenty of bigger fish to fry out there.

 

[target2019]

TrueCrypt in and of itself is a great solution, however, it was written prior to windows 10, and depending on your OS could be showing some compatibility issues.

As mentioned in another post, VeraCrypt is an excellent fork of TrueCrypt and is very stable. However, it has not undergone the same rigorous audit that TrueCrypt has, so you have to trust that they stayed true to the original code. Personally, I use VeraCrypt.

I haven't had any compatibility issues with Windows 10, FYI.

I'll probably go ahead with VeraCrypt. I viewed the documentation and it looks very similar.

 

[Kwirk]

With respect to Huawei, I fear that the US government is most afraid of losing its monopoly on back doors (as it had with Crypto AG and now may have with Huawei's competitors).

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

Reminds me of the sudden disappearance of TrueCrypt and the developer's claim that "bitlocker" was good enough. TrueCrypt is the only mass storage encryption solution to have been fully audited, any other solution, Apple, Microsoft, etc, could have numerous backdoor for the highest bidder or the biggest stick.

Still have it.