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Former sales representative of Crypto AG
Hans Bühler was a sales representative of
Crypto AG (Hagelin) in Zug
(Switzerland). As such, he frequently travelled the Middle East, selling
cipher machines to countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
In 1992, The Iranians suspected the Hagelin equipment to have a backdoor
that gave the Americans access to their traffic. Bühler was arrested
and spent the next nine months in prison.
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Bühler – completely unaware of any manipulation with the machines –
was interrogated three times a day for nine months and was finally released
in 1993, after the bail of US$ 1,000,000 was payed by Crypto AG.
This incident certainly doesn't mark
the finest period in
Crypto AG's history.
Immediately after his release from prison and his subsequent
return to Switzerland, Bühler was dismissed. In addition,
the company also wanted him to reimburse the US$ 1,000,000 bail.
Bühler then went public and confined the entire story to a revealing book
that was published in 1994 [1].
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The Swiss Federal Police – the Bundesanwaltschaft – has investigated the
matter and questioned several people, and it is said that no irrefutable
evidence against Crypto AG was ever found. The outcome of the investigation
however, remains classified to this day and repeated requests from
journalists for public disclosure of the results of the investigation
have so far been denied.
Since Hans Bühler went public, some of his former colleagues have decided
to come out as well. Former software engineer Jürg Spörndli
confirmed that the company was visited frequently by
NSA specialists and that
on several occasions he was instructed by his manager to swap a
cryptographic algorithm that he had developed, for an alternative one
– supplied by the NSA
– that was clearly weaker [2].
This case shows great similarity to the weakening of the
Philips PX-1000
[3].
The story of the deliberate weakening of the algorithms at the request of
the NSA, is corroborated by former Crypto AG director
Oskar Sturzinger,
in an interview with Crypto Museum in November 2008 [4].
Previously classified documents — that were partly released by the NSA in
2014 — have meanwhile produced convincing evidence of a secret deal between
Crypto AG
and the NSA
from 1951 onwards [5].
In January 2018, it was announced that Crypto AG would be split, and that
the international part would be taken over by a Swedish company.
Hans Bühler died in August 2018.
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Tuesday 12 January 2016. Last changed: Wednesday, 14 August 2019 - 15:53 CET.
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