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Founded during the Second World War, the Swiss cryptography firm, Crypto AG, has provided top-of-the-line devices for encoding communications to some 120 countries. Starting in 1970, however, the CIA and then-West Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, secretly bought and controlled the company, using its devices to eavesdrop on enemies and allies alike, according to a joint investigation by the Washington Post and German public broadcaster ZDF, based on a classified internal CIA history.

First dubbed “Thesaurus” and later renamed to “Rubicon,” the CIA hailed the decades-long operation as the “intelligence coup of the century” in its classified history, RT reported.

Foreign governments were paying good money to the US and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two… foreign countries.

Though the intelligence agencies formed a relationship with the firm soon after World War II, they would step up their role in 1970 following a $5 million deal to take over the company. From there, the agencies controlled virtually every part of Crypto AG’s operations, ranging from hiring decisions, directing sales targets, and designing its high-tech encryption devices – with secret backdoors accessible only to them, of course.

The company’s clients, none of whom were ever made aware of the intelligence agency involvement, included Iran, various Latin American governments, India, Pakistan and even the Vatican. Throughout the 1980s, some 40 percent of all diplomatic cables and other government transmissions analyzed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) ran through Crypto AG’s devices, suggesting the agencies drew a vast amount of material from the eavesdropping operation.

The CIA ran a victory lap over the apparent success of Rubicon in its 96-page history, gloating:

Imagine the idea of the American government convincing a foreign manufacturer to jimmy equipment in its favor… Talk about a brave new world.

While both China and the former Soviet Union were distrustful of Crypto AG and never made use of its products during Rubicon’s Cold War heyday, the compromised devices were used to gather intelligence during a number of high-profile geopolitical events.

Crypto AG made millions of dollars throughout the nearly 50-year operation, with the profits split between the two agencies. While the BND reportedly used some of the funds to finance its own field operations, the CIA leveraged its proceeds to buy up competing for cryptography firms, apparently hoping to corner the market and funnel sales into Crypto.

The BND bowed out of the arrangement in 1993 over what the CIA termed a “storm of publicity,” after a Crypto employee was imprisoned in Iran. The CIA, however, simply bought up the BND’s share afterward and kept the operation running until 2018 when it is thought to have sold off the company’s assets. By then, the firm’s prominence had waned with the rise of cheaper internet encryption technology, although it remains unclear whether the CIA ever entirely cut ties with the company.

The company’s current owners – who since rebranded the firm as Crypto International – have denied any knowledge of involvement with intelligence agencies, however.

“We at Crypto AG International have never had any relationship with the CIA or BND – and please quote me,” company chairman Andreas Linde told the Post.

“If what you are saying is true, then absolutely I feel betrayed, and my family feels betrayed, and I feel there will be a lot of employees who will feel betrayed as well as customers.”

The Swiss government, meanwhile, ordered an investigation into the alleged decades-long intelligence-gathering operation on Tuesday.

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In a few cases, your SIM card may pose more of a security risk than your phone’s software. AdaptiveMobile Security researchers say they’ve discovered a new vulnerability, nicknamed Simjacker, that’s being used to surveil people’s devices by an unnamed surveillance company. The technique sends SMS messages containing instructions for an old S@T Browser app supported on some carriers’ SIM cards. Where S@T was originally intended to launch browsers, play sounds or otherwise trigger common actions on phones, Simjacker uses it to obtain location info and IMEI numbers that are later sent to an “accomplice device” (again using SMS) that records the data, Engadget reported.

Crucially, the approach is silent. While it does use SMS, you won’t get notifications. An intruder can obtain frequent updates without giving away their activity. The exploit is also device-agnostic, and has been used against iPhones, numerous brands of Android phones and some SIM-equipped Internet of Things devices.

And it’s not just a theoretical exercise. The surveillance company has reportedly been using Simjacker in 30-plus countries (mainly in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and eastern Europe) for a minimum of two years. While most targets were ‘only’ checked a few times per day over long stretches of time, a handful of people were targeted hundreds of times over the space of a week — 250 in the case of the most prominent target. It’s not believed to be a mass surveillance campaign, but AdaptiveMobile also hasn’t said whether this was being used for tracking criminals or more nefarious purposes, like spying on political dissidents. The company is mounting a “highly sophisticated” operation, AdaptiveMobile said.

It should be possible for networks to thwart these attacks. Simjacker is sending code rather than everyday text, so it should be feasible to block the code. It may be difficult to coordinate that response, though, when the affected countries have a total population of a billion. And while you’re not likely to be targeted by this particular organization, there’s nothing precluding a similarly capable attacker from launching a wider campaign. It may be a long while before you can assume your SIM isn’t a potential weakness.

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Ahmad Reza Jalali, who has been in prison since April 2016, was shown on national TV earlier this month confessing to providing information to Mossad about Iranian military and nuclear scientists, including two who were assassinated in 2010.

The convict had admitted that he had eight meetings with Mossad’s agents and that he had received money in exchange, Jafari-Dolatabadi told a meeting of judiciary officials, IRNA reported.

The prosecutor said Jalali had passed information to Mossad agents about projects related to the Defense Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), including information about the AEOI plants, the ministry’s plans and blueprints of important buildings belonging to the ministry and the AEOI.

He had also provided Mossad with the names and information of top executives of the AEOI and the Defense Ministry, Jafari-Dolatabadi said, adding that according to Jalali’s confessions, he had used flash memories to gather information from the individuals’ computers.

“Most of the information provided by the aforementioned person included complete and documented information about thirty top figures working on research, military, defense and nuclear projects, including the two martyred [scientists] Ali Mohammadi and [Mohammad] Shahriari,” he remarked.

The convict was given money and Swedish citizenship for himself and his family in exchange for the information, he added.

The prosecutor also said Jalali’s death sentence was upheld by Supreme Court on December 2, 2017.

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