Operation Rubicon
Operation Rubicon (German: Operation Rubikon), until the late 1980s called Operation Thesaurus, was a secret operation by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), lasting from 1970 to 1993 and 2018, respectively, to gather communication intelligence of encrypted government communications of other countries. This was accomplished through the sale of manipulated encryption technology (CX-52) from Swiss-based Crypto AG, which was secretly owned and influenced by the two services from 1970 onwards. In a comprehensive CIA historical account of the operation leaked in early 2020, it was referred to as the "intelligence coup of the century" in a Washington Post article. History The origins of Crypto AG go back to the Swedish engineer Arvid Damm; the company was founded in Switzerland in 1948 by the Swede Boris Hagelin. Crypto AG was considered one of the leading manufacturers of encryption technology. The company supplied to about 130 states; Operation Rubicon is said to have affected about 100 states. According to The Washington Post, the nuclear powers India and Pakistan as well as the Vatican and several other countries, mostly from the global south, used devices from Crypto AG. However, the manipulated devices from Crypto AG