ZURICH — Switzerland said on Tuesday it was probing reports that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the German BND spy service used a Swiss firm's encryption technology to crack other nations' top-secret messages. The company, called Crypto AG, sold code-making equipment to Iran, India, Pakistan, Latin American nations and dozens of other countries. The technology was modified to let the CIA and BND break codes, the Washington Post reported along with German and Swiss broadcasters ZDF and SRF. They described a Cold War-era caper in which American spymasters and counterparts from what was then West Germany from 1970 were responsible for nearly all Crypto AG operations, from hiring and firing to sales tactics. The reports cite a classified CIA history to underpin the allegations, some of which date back at least to 1992, when one of Crypto's employees was arrested and held in Iran for nine months as a suspected spy.

Source: International New York Times February 11, 2020 15:11 UTC