Crypto AG: the CIA secretly owned the “encryption” company for decades
For half a century, the CIA and West Germany's BND covertly owned the Swiss firm that sold encryption machines to over 100 governments — and read the “secure” traffic the whole time.
01What actually happened
A 2020 investigation by the Washington Post, ZDF and SRF revealed that Crypto AG, a trusted Swiss maker of encryption equipment, was secretly bought by the CIA and West Germany's BND in 1970 (Operation Rubicon). The agencies rigged the devices so they could read the diplomatic and military communications of more than 100 countries that believed the machines were secure. A leaked CIA history called it “the intelligence coup of the century.”
02Why it matters
If you don't control the math and the code, “encrypted” can be a trap set by whoever owns the vendor. Cipher's protocols and clients are designed for independent scrutiny rather than blind trust, so security does not depend on the operator's good faith — verifiability, not promises.
Sources
- Washington Post · Feb 2020How the CIA used Crypto AG encryption devices to spy on countries for decades
- Wikipedia · 2020Operation Rubicon
We describe only what these sources report. If you think we've framed something inaccurately, tell us — accuracy is the whole point.
Cipher is built for exactly this gap: zero-access encryption, no phone number, on-device AI, and minimal metadata — so the failure in this story can't happen the same way.
See how the architecture works