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from the put-all-your-secrets-in-one-basket dept.
'The intelligence coup of the century'
In case of paywall...
CIA Secretly Owned Crypto, the Swiss Company That Ruled Global Spy Comms for Decades, Says Report
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret.
The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.
The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.
But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company's devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.
For the most goodest security, use only one commercial crypto system. Trust it with all your secrets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:52PM (1 child)
From my understanding it's better to compress before encrypting as long as the encryption algorithm used doesn't have any predictable information (ie: predictable headers or patterns). IIRC there are compression algorithms specifically intended to be used with cryptography that resist having predictable prints. If the encryption cypher is stronge it should be difficult to crack regardless as the ciphertext should look random. Using block ciphers like AES would make it more difficult to determine the exact input length as well or to exactly correlate the possible plaintext locations from the ciphertext.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:54PM
Sorry, there was a typo. I meant to say
... as long as the compression* algorithm used doesn't have any predictable information (ie: predictable headers or patterns).