More details here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200212014117/https://www.washi...

The CIA/BND connection wasn't known, but the collusion with certain agencies was known to different degrees for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crypto_AG&oldid=7...

Considering that I remember reading the CIA’s own historical document on this operation, I would guess its usefulness had run its course. If I’m not mistaken, it was the CIA who released the document to journalists; it seemed like bragging.

The guy who founded Crypto AG was really good friends with a guy who became a top dog at the NSA.

> The company had about 230 employees, had offices in Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Selsdon and Steinhausen, and did business throughout the world.

That's a... really strange list of office locations, especially considering the relatively small number of employees.

> The owners of Crypto AG were unknown, supposedly even to the managers of the firm, and they held their ownership through bearer shares.

How does this work in practice? If management doesn't know who owns the company, how can the owners exercise influence on company business?

Via lawyer / legal representative if I had to hazard a guess.

How does that representative prove that they really represent the owners, if the owners aren't known to management? How can they authorize someone without revealing identifying information?

Where would this need to really prove anything arise from? The intermediaries just hire and pay the managers, that's enough

Bearer Shares authorize the holder to show up at a shareholders meeting and vote to select certain representatives as board members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_instrument

Codify all the management policy in the main charter, leaving nothing else to the board to decide?

IIRC the CEO was part of the board of directors, but the other directors were anonymous or represented by proxies.

Would be interesting what similar companies are (in parts) most likely agency fronts.

My guess would be quite a few in the soft privacy selling business, such as VPN or email providers.

Proton mail is a CIA front email provider

It is impossible to tell if this is satire or not.

I actually wish this was true. I want an email service that would last forever and is secure enough from my threats, namely security breaches of the email host and account takeover from non state actors.

Gmail is close enough, but I want an alternative. An email service run by the nsa or the cia would be great.

(No sarcasm is intended)

Hmm... should I choose a provider with a history of spying on everyone and destabilization, or Google? ...OK, I'll go with the CIA.

Proton Mail's extremely bureaucratic operational deafness, and their glacial pace of product features and open-sourcing, would certainly lend support to that idea.

That is a false statement: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/14demhj/debunki....

To address the broader topic of this thread, there is no comparison between Crypto AG and us. Our encryption occurs client-side, our cryptographic code is open source ( https://proton.me/community/open-source ), and our tech can and has been independently verified. More about this here: https://proton.me/blog/is-protonmail-trustworthy.

I wrote blog entry on this subject with a very similar name [0] which covers the CryptoAG story in more detail. It doesn't have the 2020 news.

[0]: A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013), https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html

This is an epically cool blog post! - submit it to HN on its own merits.

This was of particular interest to me:

>>>"...1986 Reagan tipped off the Libyans that the US could decrypt their communications by talking about information he could only get through Libya decrypts on TV15. In 1991 the Iranians learned that the NSA could break their diplomatic communications when transcripts of Iranian diplomatic communications ended up in a French court case..."

Because, in 1986 - thats effectively when a lot of the phreaking and social engineering was at a peak - Cyberpunk was moving from imagination --> zeitgeist --> reality.

Social engineering and line-printer litter recovery were yielding the backdoors into the Telecom Switching system. BBS's were raging [0].

So when you get a gaph-guffaw look into infosec in a slipup like these ones, it reinforces in mind that the 80s were some really wild times all around as technology tsunami'd from people's minds business and reality.

[0] BBS Docu - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460402/

[1] phreaking - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

[2] history of phreaking - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PmkUPBhL4U

Thanks, just submitted

Good find, if I get around to updating that blog I'll add and credit your hn name.