The
SIGABA was probably the most secure rotor
cipher machine during WW2. The SIGABA ECM
Mark II (CSP 888/889) had three banks of
five rotors each. One set of five rotors
was used to encrypt the alphabet. The
other two banks of rotors were used to
scramble the signals that control the
movement of the encryption rotors. The
result is a very irregular and complex
stepping of the encryption rotors. The
SIGABA was a most secure machine and its
message traffic has never been broken. It
remained in service until the 1950's,
when it was replaced by more modern
systems such as the KL-7 and on-line
ciphering machines.
During WW2 the US and Britain both
developed a compatible cipher machine
system, based on their own machines. On
American side the special SIGABA CCM
(Combined Cipher Machine), designated
ASAM 5 by the Army and CSP-1700 by the
Navy, was equipped with the CSP-1600
Typex compatible rotor cage. This machine
was interoperable with the CCM version of
the British Typex cipher machine. After
the war, the CCM remained in service
between The US, Britain and Canada, and
later on within NATO.
The SIGABA was a wonderful machine
that incorporated the newest developments
in the field of cipher machines.
Unfortunately all machines were
systematically withdrawn and destructed
for reasons of security. Only a hand-full
most rare ECM Mark II's survived in
museums and the special SIGABA CCM
version is an even more endangered
species. The story of the Famous German
Enigma cipher machine is now widely known
to the public, but regretfully the SIGABA
with its far better cryptographic
strength as the Enigma is only known
within the world of cryptography.
More information is available on
several good websites. On my January Image of the Month
page you can see the rare SIGABA CCM in
detail. On the Pampanito website you
can read all about the history of the ECM
Mk II. They aslo published the complete SIGABA manual. More
technical details are found on John Savard's website.
Jerry proc provides more military
information on both the SIGABA ECM Mk II and
the CCM version. Finally,
you can also read the Cryptologia article on
SIGABA.
Until the end of February there's a
one-chance opportunity to view the unique
SIGABA CCM version at the Secret Messages
exhibition in the Jan Corver Museum.
Wednesday,
January 28, 2009
Numbers
Tool
I just uploaded a new
version of my freeware Numbers tool. With
Numbers 6.2 you can generate and print
standard one-time pads, one-time
worksheets or custom number sequences
that are customizable in various ways.
You can also view and print five
different one-time pad letters-to-figures
conversion tables.
The program uses very sensitive mouse
movement coordinates, together with time
measurements of these movements, to
initialize ten random number generators
that are mixed together. With its random
source seed and a seed depth of
9.3*101198 the program is practically
usable to generate one-time pads.
The program is downloadable as exe
file only or full install on my one-time
pad page.
Sunday, February
01, 2009
Recent
Espionage Cases
On the US Department of
Defense PERSEREC website (Defense
Personnel Security Research Center)
there's an interesting collection of recent espionage cases
(from 1975 onwards).
PERSEREC gets its
directions and research priorities from
the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary
of Defense (HUMINT, Counterintelligence
and Security). PERCEREC assists the
personnel of DoD on matters of security.
They are part of the Defense Human
Resources Activity (DHRA)
Their Selected Reports section
contains many reports and studies on
intelligence, espionage and security. One
of those reports is the extensive
"Espionage Against the US by
Americans 1947–2001", an
analyses of 150 spy cases. Who commits
espionage, and why and how they did it.
You can download the full report here.
Sunday, February
08, 2009
Cyber
Security Tips
Everyone
with a computer and a network connection
should pay a visit to US Computer
Emergency Readiness Team US-CERT website.
US-CERT is founded to protect the
Internet structure within the United
States, analyze and reduce threats in
cyber space, respond to cyber incidents
and to spread warning information. To
perform this tremendous task, the US-CERT
works together with the Department of
Homeland Security and several private and
public sectors. They have lots of useful
information, not only for US citizens,
but for everyone who has a computer.
An important part of making the
Internet a bit more secure is to provide
good information to the computer user. On
the Alerts and Tips page
you can find information about current
security problems and vulnerabilities,
important security updates and patches
for various computer platforms.
A most interesting page are the Cyber Security Tips.
What is cyber security, what can you do
to protect your computer and network,
what kind of threats can you expect, and
how do I protect myself against them?
They give tips on safe communication,
using e-mail and browsing on the net, and
how to keep your software up-to-date and
secure. Privacy, protecting it with
encryption, passwords, it's all there.
Those who often use a computer but are
not really computer geeks can really
learn here to avoid some important
security mistakes they make on computers
and learn to protect their privacy.
This information on the Security Tips
page should come with each new computer
that you buy. Actually, using a computer
without these basic tips is like driving
a car for the first time and not having
any clue of the road signs and traffic
rules. So, be safe and read it!
Thursday,
February 12, 2009
US
M-209 Simulator Update
I
just finished an update of my US M-209
Cipher Machines Simulator. The M-209 was
an American licenced version of the
Hagelin C-38. In 1940, Boris Hagelin went
to the United States to promote his C
Type pin-and-lug machines which resulted
in the largest sale ever of crypto
machines. The US military selected his
C-38 as tactical ciphering device and
designated it as M-209. By the end of the
Second World War over 140,000 of these
small M-209 machines were produced in the
US.
The M-209 Sim is an accurate software
replica of that famous crypto device,
fully compatible with the real machine,
with authentic graphics, very realistic
handling and all the nuts and bolts, just
like the real thing.
The new 3.0 update now incorporates a
practical drop-down menu, a pdf help file
that explains how the machine was used by
the US Army and detailed instructions of
the original encryption procedures. You
can download the simulator on
my website.
Sunday, February
15, 2009
The
Ultimate Spy Book
Keith
Melton is a well known author of several
spy books and an expert on espionage
equipment and clandestine devices. He has
an enormous collection of these unique
spy tools. This book is beautifully
illustrated with more than 600 detailed
images of ingenious spy accessories and
weapons. The book starts with a brief
historical review on the beginnings of
espionage, the First World War and the
Russian revolution. Melton takes us back
to the Second World War, with the British
SOE - Special Operations Executive , the
American OSS - Office of Strategic
Operations and the German Abwehr,
Sicherheitsdienst and Gestapo. The covert
communications equipment, suitcase
radios, special weapons, the cracking of
codes and Soviet wartime spy rings.
However, the major part of the book
is, not surprisingly, about the Cold War.
The Cold War was a period in history that
was characterised by mistrust and fear
between East and West. These were the
heydays of espionage, with Berlin as the
capital of spies. Many of the most
notorious spy cases were about the battle
for intelligence information between the
United States and the Soviet Union during
the Cold War. This battle was fought in
the sky, with U2 spy planes and
satellites, but also on the ground by
intelligence officers and their agents in
enemy territory. Hidden and automatic
cameras for observation such as the Robot
Star, small mini cameras like the famous
Minox or the F21 with its lens in a
jacket button for clandestine photography
and small camera systems to copy
documents. Communications equipment for
covert operations, monitoring equipment,
dead drops to secretly pass documents and
films. It's all in the book.
Melton also brings us the story of
secret operations and the special devices
that were developed for these operations.
If there are spies, there's
counter-intelligence. Bug detectors,
anti-eavesdropping equipment,
interception of documents and all kind of
tools to burgle or secretly gain access
to installations or documents of the
enemy. Training and recruitment, spy
rings, false covers and legends, it's all
there. But above all, The Ultimate Spy is
a book to watch, with many splendid
photos about the art of spy-craft and its
technology. A book that would make James
Bond's Mister Q jealous. ISBN: 0789404435
The National
Security Agency (NSA) recently
released a 1973/1981 NSA Lecture by David
Boak about Communications Security, under
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Already released last December, I only
recently had the time to read the 158
page document thoroughly. Volume I starts
with the history of COMSEC and how
awareness and research evolved into
practical concepts and regulations. Also,
the development and characteristics of
some important cipher systems are
described (p54). Another chapter
describes the problems they faced in the
field of TEMPEST and hostile Signal
Intelligence (p85), with examples of how
difficult it is to suppress unwanted
signals, emitted by all kinds of
communications devices.
Volume II (p95) includes Operations
Security (OPSEC), the problems with
Remote Keying, Programmable COMSEC
Modules (PCSM), the issue of public use
of cryptography (p127), the use of
cryptography on general purpose computers
and the lack of security knowledge by the
public (p135). There's also a chapter on
the use of the Nestor voice encryption
system in Vietnam. Emergency destruction
of equipment is another complex issue.
Examples of how things can go wrong are
the USS Pueblo incident and the 1979
takeover of the US embassy in Iran
(p147). Finally, there's a chapter on
Murphy's Law (p155), with some hilarious
actual examples in the field of COMSEC.
Although some 30 years old, the
lecture is even today pretty up-to-date.
In particular, the public use of
cryptography is still an issue of
discussion, with NSA trying to protect
the nations security and SIGINT
capabilities, against the public,
demanding its privacy. Also, the security
problems that are related to the use of
crypto applications on computers still
aren't solved and, to be honest, I don't
believe the Tempest and SIGINT problems
of commercial PC's will ever be solved.
The modern PC is just a very very bad
concept. David Boak already in 1973
recognized the inevitable insecurity
(read: leak as hell) of today's computer.
I remember an NSA official saying
"in 99 percent of the cases we don't
have to break anything, we simply
retrieve the plain version". I'm
still waiting on the first secure PC. And
yes, MAC users, you're just as leak, only
less targeted. Keep on dreaming.
There are quite a few blanked pages,
but still plenty of information available
to discover. You can directly read the NSA COMSEC Lecture pdf
or go to governmentattic.org
and discover more documents that are
released under the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA).
Friday, February
27, 2009
Estonian
Spy Scandal
Last
September, a spy scandal has sent shock
waves through NATO. Meanwhile, more
details have surfaced on what is believed
to be the most damaging spy operation in
decades. Those who believed that the end
of the Cold War also meant the end of
Intelligence operations by Russia on
Western soil, think again.
Apparently, the Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service SVR
(Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) mounted a
most successful many years' operation
against NATO with the aid of Herman Simm,
an Estonian Government official and the
former Chief of Police, who made career
as head of the Ministry of Defense
department, responsible for secret
coordinations between NATO and the
European Union.
NATO officials say he caused 'historic
damage', comparable with the Aldrich Ames
spy case, the CIA agent who passed
critical CIA information to the KGB for
many years. According to investigators,
the KGB established contact with Simm as
early as the 1980's, when Moscow realized
that Estonia would eventually become
independent. Simm was recruited by the
SVR, the successor of the KGB, when
Estonia was a NATO candidate in the mid
1990's. While being a so-called
'sleeper', his career moved him into the
perfect spot to pass virtually all secret
documents, exchanged within the EU and
NATO, to the Russians. These included
confidential NATO analyses on Kosovo, the
Georgian war and the missile defense
program. One of his means of
communication with the SVR was a
seemingly old radio, in reality a
converted and sophisticated radio to
contact his spy handler.
This shows that Russia has more than
an eagle eye on Europe, and how security
has become a serious problem in the ever
expanding NATO alliance, which includes
several former Soviet states. Thoroughly
and far-sighted, as Russian intelligence
always has been, they undoubtedly placed
their chess pieces already many years ago
in the future heart of the Western
chess-board. You have to give it to them,
they have a brio for long-term planning.
And here's an interesting view on the
successor of the Cold War: The Cold Peace.
Thursday, March
05, 2009
How To
Learn Morse
Today,
we rely heavily on modern technology to
communicate. Telephone, mobile or
satellite phones, it's so easy to use.
So, why bother learning a 163 year old
system called Morse? Morse is one of the
most basic ways to communicate, but also
one of the most reliable and flexible.
You can send Morse by land line, by
radio, with a signal lamp, or even as an
alternative to the tap code, by replacing
a dot (did) by a knock and a dash (dah)
by a double knock. But the probably most
important advantage, the system uses a
very sophisticated noise filtering and
error correction system: the human ear
and brain! More about Morse on Wikipedia.
The military has used Morse for many
years. As modern equipment took over the
job, Morse was generally abandoned in the
1990's. However, realizing that they lost
the only reliable way to communicate over
long distance with HF radio in poor
condition, many armed forces
re-introduced Morse courses, and its
usefulness has been proven for signal
operators, Special Forces an many others.
And it's here to stay! Satellite and
telephone will remain prime targets in
any war and if knocked out (even China
has done successful tests to blow
satellites out of space), Morse would be
the only way to get your message across,
even in the worst conditions. For the
same reasons, Morse still is very popular
among amateur radio operators.
So, why learn Morse? Well, I know a
few reasons. As a start, it's fun to
learn and to play with. Also, you never
know you might end up in an emergency
situation where communication could save
your life. With a simple flash light you
can easily send a message over several
miles in the dark. Finally, Morse is like
riding a bike: once you get it, you never
loose it. Now, how do you learn Morse?
The most popular ways are the Farnsworth
Timing and the Koch method. Both of them
makes it easy to learn Morse in little
time.
On the Just Learn Morse Code
website you can download a free software
tool to learn Morse. Personally I prefer
the free G4FON Morse Trainer,
which has less options, but is less
complicated in use. Both programs use the
Koch method, described on David Finley's website.
You start by learning two characters at
relatively fast speed, and once you
master them, you can add more and more
characters to the exercises. Write down
what you hear and verify it after the
exercise with the program output. A
character speed of 15 words per minute
(WPM) and a code speed of 9 WPM are ideal
to start. You'll be amazed with your
progress in just a few hours.
And how fast is Morse? Below there's a
nice video. It's a SMS (mobile phone) vs
Morse contest. Check it out and see who's
the fasted.
Saturday, March
07, 2009
Paper
Enigma Replika
Unless
you're living on another planet, you
probably have noticed there's a financial
crisis. I can imagine that many people
are dreaming of their own Enigma machine,
but currently have more useful things to
do with their money. The really
unfortunate among us could try out Mike
Koss' Paper Enigma which
works like the real thing but doesn't
look like a real Enigma. However, now
there's also a paper Enigma that looks
exactly like the real thing!
You can construct your own Enigma
machine with only a color printer,
scissors and a bit of glue. Go to the Paper Replika website
download the pdf Enigma M4 Naval machine,
print it out in color and put it
together. That's it! You don't need stiff
card paper, plain paper will do just
fine. This is the perfect solution for
those who always wanted an Enigma machine
on their desk without paying their pants
off. It's very beautiful, with realistic
colors and nice details like an opening
lid, plugs, rotors that stick out, and
even the typical M4 handles. With some
patience and a sharp cutter, you'll be
able to make a real beauty. If you donate
$2.00 you can obtain a larger version
without the website credits on the
machine.
Tuesday, March
10, 2009
New
Zealand COMSEC History
At the New Zealand GCSB (Government
Communications Security Bureau) website
you can find a publication by Eric Morgon
about the History of Information
Assurance in New Zealand. It describes
the means of message protection from the
early days before the Second World War
until the 1970's.
You can
read about the early cipher and codes New
Zealand used, and how the Organisation of
National Security (ONS) in 1930's urged
for more and better cryptographic
protection. During the Second World War
they abandoned insecure ciphers such as
Playfair and some Telegraph Ciphers and
switched to different types of book
ciphers and one-time pads. Also the Typex
Mark II CCM (Combined Cipher Machine) was
introduced during the war.
In the
post-war chapter there's the KL-7 and the
5 UCO one-time pad on-line Telex
enciphering system, and in the final
chapter they explain how COMSEC became
more and more important within the
Government. To read the publication, open
it directly from this pdf link (325
Kb) or go to the History of IA page.
Wednesday, March
11, 2009
Stasi
SIGINT Operations
The
Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS)
of the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische
Republiek), commonly known as the Stasi,
is widely recognized as the most
effective Intelligence agency of all
former Soviet states, and the HVA (Haupt
Verwaltung Aufklaerung) under Markus Wolf
is probably the most successful Foreign
Intelligence service ever to have
existed. With an enormous number of
agents, operating in the West, the HVA
with its HUMINT (Human Intelligence) was
considered to be the most important
Intelligence source for both East Germany
and the Soviet Union.
However, research of the Stasi
archives, seized in Gera when the DDR
collapsed, show that Hauptabteilung III
or HA III, the SIGINT (Signal
Intelligence) directorat of the MfS, also
mounted massive SIGINT assaults on the
West. According to the archives, the
SIGINT operations proved to have been as
significant, and in some cases even more
important than the HUMINT. This is
interesting, because the general idea was
that the HVA success more or less
compensated the lack of SIGINT
capabilities. It is now estimated that 30
up to 50 percent of all Intelligence
information during the 1980's was
collected by SIGINT.
HA III had 25 departments, over 2000
staff officers and some 80 installations
in East Germany. They monitored shortwave
transmissions and more than 30,000 West
German telephones from military,
diplomatic and intelligence personnel
from both West Germany and NATO. They
also eavesdropped on radio signal paths
(telephone relay), used by the Federal
Post Office, and on VHF radios of the BND
(West German intelligence) surveillance
teams. Virtually all West German
satellite-based telephone, Telex, fax,
and data transmissions were monitored, as
well as the MARISAT, FLEETSATCOM, LEASAT,
and INTELSAT communications satellites.
HA III worked closely and efficiently
together with the HVA and other parts of
the MfS, which enabled them to collect
vast quantities of critical information.
HA III even had a special bilateral
liaison with its KGB counterpart. Western
Intelligence clearly underestimated the
MfS's capabilities.
The complete article is found on this page at the
CIA Studies in Intelligence section. More
information also available in the Ben Fisher paper
(pdf) and on Spycatcher.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Washington-Moscow
Hot Line
The
direct link between United States and the
Soviet Union, and later the Russian
Federation, is a well known legacy of the
Cold War. The Cuban missile crisis,
generally regarded as the moment in which
the Cold War came closest to nuclear war,
made the US and USSR realise that
reliable and secure communications are
essential in event of a crisis.
The Hotline became operational in
August 1963 and was a full duplex
teleprinter (Telex) circuit. Although the
hot line always has been shown as a red
telephone in movies and popular culture,
the option of a speech link was turned
down as it was believed that spontaneous
verbal communications could lead to
miscommunications, misperceptions,
incorrect translation or unwise
spontaneous remarks, which are serious
diplomatic disadvantages in times of
severe crisis. Nevertheless, the red
phone myth lived a long life.
The real hot line was a direct cable
link, routed from
Washington-London-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Helsinki
to Moscow. It was a double link with
commercial teleprinters, one link with
English character teleprinters and the
other link with Cyrillic character
teleprinters. The links were encrypted
with one-time tapes by means of four
ETCRRM's (Electronic Teleprinter
Cryptographic Regenerative Repeater
Mixer). The one-time tape encryption
provided unbreakable encryption, absolute
security and privacy. Although a higly
secure system, the unclassified standard
teleprinters and ETCRRM's (see image)
were sold by commercial firms and
therefore did not disclose any secret
crypto technology to the Soviets.
In 1974 the hot line underwent a first
modernization and a new link was
established by two American Intelsat and
two Soviet Molniya II satellites. The
original wire circuit was kept as a
back-up. A second upgrade, the addition
of a high-speed facsimile link, became
operational in 1986. From that moment on,
the Hot Line consists of two satellite
links and one wire teleprinter circuit.
A very detailed description of the
Washington-Moscow hot line is found on
Jerry Proc's great Crypto Machines,
which also contains a ETCRRM page. On my
April 2009 Image
of the month you can view the ETCRRM
in high-res (don't forget to click the
image once, and click again to zoom in!).
The ETCRRM was a pretty popular device,
used for high level military
communications in several countries.
For more information one one-time
tapes, please visit my one-time
pad page. If you're curious about
'Red Phones' and what they actually are,
you can check out Jerry's Red Phone page.
Friday, April
3, 2009
Crypto
Machines with One-time Keys
In my previous post I
already mentioned the ETCRRM, a device to
encrypt teletype signals with one-time
tapes. Systems that use the principle of
one-time key encryption were very popular
until the 1980's, because of their
absolute security. Most of these machines
encrypted five-bit teletype signals by
mixing (Exclusive Or function - XOR ) the
plain signal with a one-time key tape.
Each one-time tape consisted of truly
random five-bit values and there were
only two copies of each tape, one for
both ends of the teletype link. Each tape
was to be used only once, and destroyed
after used.
Of course, the one-time tape method
required a complex logistical support to
securely distribute a large amount of
one-time tapes. Something that could only
be supported by government departments
such as the military, intelligence
services and diplomacy. As you can
imagine, an enormous amount of one-time
tapes travelled around the world by
courier or in diplomatic bags, since you
needed as much one-time tapes as there
were message to be send.
A five bit teletype punched paper tape.
Can you read it?
Although a pretty old system
(developed by Gilbert Vernam in 1917),
its unbreakable encryption kept it
popular until sophisticated electronic
crypto machines and modern computer
algorithms provided enough security.
Nevertheless, some electronic or software
one-time key systems still exist for
special purposes where absolute security
has priority.
Some of the one-time key ciphering
machines are the American TELEKRYPTON, B-2 PYTHON, SIGTOT
and SIGSALY (which used
one-time noise), the British BID-590 NOREEN (see
image) and 5-UCO, the Canadian ROCKEX, the Dutch ECOLEX series, the
Swiss Hagelin CD-57, CX-52 and T-55 with
superencipherment, the German Siemens T-37-ICA and M-190, the
East-German T-304 LEGUAN, the
Czech SD1, the Russian M-100 SMARAGD and M-105 N AGAT, and the
Polish T-352/T-353 DUDEK,
and of course, the Norwegian ETCRRM, famous from
the Washington/Moscow hotline. I'm sure I
forgot many more, any suggestions are
welcome.
Apart from being unbreakable, one-time
tape systems were quite simple and did
not have any secret crypto technology
aboard, as mixing one-time keys with
plain text is a commonly known basic
method of encryption. Whereas other
encryption machines were considered as
listed secret crypto equipment, one-time
tape devices were mostly unclassified.
Only the one-time tapes themselves were
considered secret material. More about
one-time pad on
my website.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Noor Inayat
Khan
Noor
Inayat Khan, the exotic in Russia born
descent of an Indian muslim prince, was
the first British female Special
Operations Executive (SOE) agent in WW2
to be sent to occupied France as a
wireless operator. Although some officers
doubted whether she was suitable for SOE
operations, she was infiltrated in June
1943 under the false identity of
Jeanne-Marie Regnier and codename
Madelaine, to occupy the most dangerous
SOE post, Paris.
While constantly relocating to avoid
being captured, she transmitted German
troop movements to London. Wireless
operator was a high risk job, as they
could only stay in the air for a few
minutes. The German Sicherheitsdienst SD
was very skilled in tracing clandestine
radios with direction-finding equipment.
They managed to track down and arrest
virtually all operators. Noor was one of
the few remaining. Well aware of the
risks, she turned down several offers to
return to London.
After four months, Noor was betrayed
and consequently arrested by the SD in
October 1943. She resisted her arrest so
fiercely that she was treated as an
extremely dangerous prisoner. Although
interrogated in the Gestapo headquarters
for five weeks, she never gave any
information. She made two escape
attempts, one just after her arrest and
another on 25 November, together with two
other SOE agents. Both attempts failed.
Noor was relocated to a prison in
Pforzheim, Germany, where she was
regarded as very dangerous and kept in
chains and in solitary confinement. Ten
months later, on 11 September, Noor was
moved to the Dachau concentration camp,
where she was cruelly beaten by an SS
officer, prior to her execution in the
early morning of 13 September 1944. Her
last word was "Liberté". She
was 30 years old. The remarkable Noor
Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded the
British George Cross as one of only four
women ever to receive this award, and
also the French Croix de Guerre.
The
International Spy Museum
just published a new podcast interview
with Rear Admiral 'Mac' Showers. He
served 31 years in the US Navy and 12
years in the CIA. During the Second World
War he was intelligence analyst on
deciphered Japanese messages, encrypted
with JN-25, the main Japanese naval code.
Showers worked for Admiral Nimitz in a
team of codebreakers, linguists and
analysts. Nimitz asked them: "tell
me today what the Japanese are doing
tomorrow". They did, and made
important contributions to the American
victory in the Pacific.
Showers explains in the interview the
first important achievement of the
codebreakers, with the Japanese attack on
Port Moresby in March 1942. Deciphered
messages enabled the US Navy to counter
the offensive in what is known as the
Battle of the Coral Sea. However, the
most important contribution of the
codebreakers to the war in the Pacific is
without a doubt the deciphering of the
plans for the Battle of Midway on 4 June
1942. The Japanese fleet was heading
towards the Midway Atoll with a total of
126 ships, including 4 aircraft carriers.
Intelligence from the codebreakers
provided the US Navy an important
tactical advantage and although
completely outnumbered (they only had 3
aircraft carriers and 32 ships) they
decisively defeated the Japanese Imperial
Navy in a surprise attack.
Admiral Showers also talks about how a
single deciphered message lead to the
downing of Admiral Yamamoto's airplane.
Yamamoto, chief in command of the
combined Japanese fleet, made and
inspection tour in the South Pacific. The
message revealed all flight details about
when and where Yamamoto would be,
including arrival and departure times and
locations. Yamamoto was killed on 18
April 1943 when his G4M bomber, escorted
by seven Zeros, was shot down near
Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.
This is a unique 30 minutes interview
with one of the few surviving veterans of
the intelligence battle in the Second
World War. You can listen to it on Spycast but it might
be more practical to download the 26 Mb
file from Spycast feed. Just
right-click the 14 April mp3 file and
select "Save Target As...".
More about Donald 'Mac' Showers on Navy TV and on NSA's Hall of Honor.
Friday, April 24,
2009
Cryptology
documentaries
Cryptology
is a wonderful science with a most
interesting history. Unfortunately, few
people know what cryptology actually is,
and what is means to us. Code makers and
code breakers influenced history for
thousands of years and determined
politics and the outcome of many wars in
the past, and it will continue to do so
in the future.
One of the reasons that cryptology is
unknown to the public is that it has been
a very obscure science for ages. Even
today, only a few books found their way
to the general public and documentaries
about cryptology on TV science or history
channels are most rare. Nonetheless, some
very interesting documentaries exist and
it is a pity that they are seldom showed
on TV.
On Youtube, there are quite a few good
videos to discover. A nice one is the 45
minutes documentary Top Secret NSA from
Discovery, about the role of the National
Security Agency in recent history (on the
image you see NSA's Puzzle Palace). It
was the first time NSA allowed a view
inside. The complete video is available
as Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 and Part 5. Maximize (on
the video's right bottom) and enjoy!
There's also a very comprehensive 40
minutes documentary on History Channel in
four parts: Part 1Part 2Part 3 and Part 4. It covers the
complete history of cryptology from the
ancient up to today (only the final part
seems to be missing).
It would be nice if the TV programmers
aired such documentaries a little bit
more so that cryptologists were placed a
little bit more in the well deserved
spotlight. Their actual work however will
rarely see daylight.
Friday, May 1,
2009
Intelligence
on the Web
On
the Maryland Loyola College
website there's a vast collection of
Intelligence web links. These pages cover
an enormous number of intelligence
organisations worldwide and various
subjects and document, related to
intelligence. If you don't find it here,
it's probably more secret than the NSA.
The links are divided into three main
groups:
The Strategic Intelligence
page covers the intelligence and security
organisations from all over the world,
documents to strategic intelligence and
related laws, reports and journals,
terrorism and counter terrorism. It also
includes many links to historical
documents and subjects.
The Military Intelligence
page includes information regarding US
military intelligence agencies, military
intelligence units, defense intelligence
documents and historical references.
The Economic Intelligence
section contains links to economic
espionage, competitive intelligence,
government economic and business
intelligence and journals, articles,
papers and other documents, related to
economic and business intelligence, as
well as commercial sites related to
intelligence.
Friday, May 08,
2009
NSA
Director on RSA Conference
On 21 April,
Lieutenant General Keith Alexander gave a
talk at the RSA Security Conference in
San Francisco. Cryptome published the
transcript of his talk of which the main
topic was cyber security. Keith Alexander
is the director of the National Security
Agency, so he knows what he's talking
about. The talk was a strong pleading for
cooperation between the government,
industry and academia.
There's a need to protect one
country’s networks. The cyber
attacks on countries like Estonia,
Latvia, and more recently Georgia have
shown how devastating these attack can
be, and how cyber crime evolved to cyber
warfare. Can we provide early warning for
such attacks? NSA protects military and
intelligence networks, but what’s
the NSA’s role in securing the other
networks that are vital to the US? How do
they assist the Department of Homeland
Security? Lots of questions to solve.
That’s where the Comprehensive
National Cyber Initiative comes in. But
they face tremendous challenges and
problems. According to Alexander, the NSA
will have to work closely together, not
only with other government departments,
but also with the industry and academia.
However, this means sharing knowledge and
technology that needs to be kept secret.
That's not obvious. And what's the right
balance between civil liberties, privacy
and a nations security?
There's a long way to go and it's easy
to criticise the government, but they
have a tough job. It clear that the NSA
director reaches out to the academics to
help fight cyber crime and warfare.
Critics will say NSA is recruiting the
public (opinion), but still, there's a
war to be fought on the Internet, and
who's going to fight it?
His talk is written out and published on this Cryptome page.
Worth while reading. More information
about Lieutenant General Keith Alexander
is found on this NSA biography page.
Monday, May 25,
2009
Nicky
Hager's Secret Power
Secret Power, Nicky Hager's
fascinating book about New Zealand's role
in the ECHELON spy network, is now online
and free available. The book brings the
story of the global SIGINT (Signal
Intelligence) operations (call it spying
or eavesdropping or whatever) by the New
Zealand GCSB (Government Communications
Security Bureau), in close cooperation
with the United Kingdom, the United
States and other countries.
The information in the book is based
on interviews with staff members of the
GCSB and describes in detail who was
targeted by ECHELON and how they did it.
It also reveals details on the UKUSA
Agreement, which enables massive
gathering and sharing of Signal
Intelligence between the US, the UK,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Due to
the combined SIGINT operations of the
UKUSA countries, Hager's investigations
provide an insight view, not only in
GCSB's kitchen, but also in Britain's
GCHQ, the American NSA and Australia's
DSD. Hager was one of the first to bring
out information on the ECHELON project. A
truly fascinating book. Don't miss it!
You can view or download the complete e-book
on his website. Just right-click the
"Full Book" link (at the top of
the page) and select "save target
as...". It's a 22Mb file containing
301 great pages!
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Spies
and Numbers - The Kendall Myers Case
On
June 5, 2009 the US Department of Justice
announced that US State Department
official Walter Kendall Myers and his
wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers were
arrested on charges of espionage for the
Cuban government for nearly 30 years.
Meyers, now retired, worked at the Bureau
of Intelligence and Research (INR). He held a Top
Secret security clearance and had daily
access to classified information. This is
without a doubt a most damaging spy case.
He and his wife acknowledged having
received encrypted messages from Cuban
Intelligence via a shortwave radio they
possessed. The Columbia State District
Court indictment stated that "Cuban
intelligence broadcasts encrypted
shortwave radio messages in Morse Code or
by a voice reading numbers" and also
that "It was part of the conspiracy
that Cuban Intelligence would and did
broadcast shortwave messages in Morse
Code which were receive by Kendall
Myers". Cryptome published the State Court indictment
(3.3 MB zip file) which contains sections
describing the numbers station.
This case once again confirms that the
mysterious numbers stations are indeed
used by Intelligence agencies to
communicate with their agents. The
streams of numbers or letters are sent by
powerful shortwave transmitters in Morse
or by voice. Although there were more
numbers stations in the Cold Ware era,
many are still very active and, not
surprisingly, some of them are Cuban.
Radio amateurs monitor these broadcasts
and they sometimes give nicknames to
stations, according to the introduction
phrase. The Cuban Spanish Lady
"Attencion", described at
Simon Mason's Shortwave Espionage
pages, is one of them.
Although no government or legal
broadcaster has ever acknowledged the
existence of numbers stations or admitted
any involvement with these stations, the
official court documents again show
clearly that these stations are indeed
used by intelligence services to send
secret messages. And still, every day,
numbers messages are transmitted all over
the world. Who's listening to them?
If you want to read more about the
mysterious numbers stations, just visit
my numbers
web page. More about the Myers case
is found on the US DOJ website.
There's an FBI affidavit (pdf)
on the Ana Belen Montes case, a Cuban
agent caugth in 2001. It describs in
detail how she received and deciphered
numbers messages. And as a bonus, here's
a video of a numbers
reading machine, used by the East
German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The
Berlin Tunnel
One of the most spectacular
SIGINT operations in the Cold War era was
project PBJOINTLY, the Berlin tunnel. It
was a CIA operation to tap three main
Soviet communications cables in the
Soviet-occupied part of Berlin. Planning
and construction lasted for five years
and started in the late 1940's with
penetrating the office of the East German
post to covertly obtains plans of the
Soviet network. In 1952, they had all
information to determine the ideal
location for the tap, and trial tappings
on other locations were performed.
It became a joint operation between
the US and British intelligence. Mid
1953, construction planning started. The
US Engineering Corps would dig the 1500
feet (500 m) tunnel underneath the East
German border and the British would drive
the vertical shaft towards the cables,
only 27 inches (68 cm) beneath the
surface alongside a highway, and provide
the tapping of the cable. Some 3,000 tons
of sand had to be disposed without border
guards noticing it. A warehouse project
near the tunnel was set up as cover and
the tunnel dirt was disposed in its
basement. All planning and work had to be
done in absolute secrecy, with as little
as possible people involved. Meanwhile,
linguists in Russian were recruited and
trained.
In August 1953, tunneling started,
right beneath border guards, forcing
engineers to halt and keep silent, each
time the guards walked over. By March
1955 the tunnel and the tap room, a large
air-conditioned sealed room with
electronics, were completed. The three
main Soviet landlines were tapped, the
signals preamplified in the tap room and
sent further down the tunnel for
recording. It was a marvel of planning
and engineering. The cables carried 1200
channels. 28 telex circuits and 121 voice
channels were recorded continuously,
transcribed and analysed.
Nonetheless, after eleven
months of tapping, the tunnel was
discovered on April 21, 1956. Apparently
by accident, when East Germans dug up a
faulty cable. However, later on, British
intelligence discovered that George
Blake, an MI6 officer who was involved
from the earliest beginning of the
planning, had been recruited by the KGB
as early as 1952. He informed his Soviet
contacts as soon as the final location of
the tunnel was planned. The tunnel and
the mole, what's in a name.
At the end, the question remains how
successful the 6.7 million dollar
operation was, and to whom. The Soviets
knew right from the start, but could not
react as this would compromise their MI6
mole. Why did they allow eleven months of
tapping? What was the value of the
intercepted intelligence? Did the
Russians fed the CIA with fake and
misleading information? Was this a
magnificent intelligence coup by the
West, or one by the East? We'll never
know...
More information about the tunnel and
its construction in this CIA document
(pdf 3.4 Mb), published on the FAS. It includes all
technical aspects, describes the
aftermath of the operation and the
complete report on the discovery by the
Soviets. On the CIA Studies in
Intelligence pages you will find many
original CIA documents
regarding the Berlin Tunnel and on this page an
account of one of the operations
officers. Below a Cold War Spies video
which includes an interview with George
Blake.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Teufelsberg
Teufelsberg
(Devil's mountain), located in west
Berlin, Germany, has a most unique
history. With its 375 ft (114 m) it is
the highest hill in the Berlin area, and
it's man-made! It is made of 12 million
cubic meter rubble, from about 400,000
destroyed buildings, during the rebuilt
of Berlin after the Second World War.
In the late 1950's, Allied mobile
listening post, eavesdropping on East
German and Soviet communications,
discovered that Teufelsberg was an ideal
location, with its unobstructed reception
of signals from all directions. In 1961,
the US Amry Security Agency (ASA) started
their first SIGINT operations out of
trucks on top of the hill. Soon after,
the first buildings were constructed, and
Field Station Teufelsberg
gradually grew over the next years to
become one of the largest Signals
Intelligence (SIGINT) stations ever.
Although Teufelsberg was located in
the British sector of Berlin, there was a
close cooperation between British and US
intelligence. Initially operated by the
ASA, the American part of the station
came under control of the Army
Intelligence and Security Command
(INSCOM) in 1977. Since then, the NSA provided most of
the personnel and equipment for its ELINT
(electronic Intelligence) and SIGINT
operations.
With its large antenna park and huge
dishes in their radomes, they intercepted
East German and Soviet radio
communications, directional microwave
links and satellite transmissions, and
captured and analysed different types of
Radar. If it was in the air, they got it.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the station
became useless and American and British
troops abandoned Teufelsberg in 1991.
As if the hill's history wasn't
mysterious enough, the secret that lies
beneath is just as curious: the Nazi
military-technical college, designed by
Albert Speer. When the Allies captured
Berlin, they tried to demolish it with
explosives, which turned out to be
impossible. They decided to bury the
massive building under a pile of rubble
from destroyed Berlin.
That story starts in the 1930's, when
Adolf Hitler ordered his chief architect
Albert Speer to develop a new Berlin.
Nazi Project 'Welthauptstadt Germania'
(World Capital Germania) included a huge
Olympic stadion, a new Chancellary, an
avenue of victory, a triumphal arc and
other monumental architecture. Here's a video of how
it would look like. In 1937, they started
with the first part of the project, the
Wehrtechnische Fakultät or
military-technical college. Changing
priorities during the Second World War
halted the project and it was never
resumed. Today, there's even an
association, called Berlin Unterwelten
(underground), that wants to explore the remains
of the elite military academy underneath
the Teufelsberg.
More about the Teufelsberg SIGINT
station on this website.
There's also a site with nice panoramic pictures
(may take a while to download). To have a
birds-eye look on Teufelsberg, start up
your Google Earth and type "Berlin
Teufelsberg" in the search box. Key
in "Bischofsgruen Schneeberg",
to fly to another one. With "Brocken
Schierke" you'll jump right to the
most famous former Soviet station in East
Germany. More about US listening stations
on US
border operations in Germany.
On youtube there are several video's about Teufelsberg
and how it looks now. Here's one to start
with:
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Bletchley
Park Veterans Honored
Exactly
70 years after the Government Code and
Cipher School (GC&CS) began its
codebreaking work, the veterans that
served in Bletchley finally received
official recognition. Finally! Finally!!!
During the Second World War, Bletchley
Park was the center of all British
codebreaking efforts and employed more
than 7000 people. They were a remarkable
mix of military and civilian
cryptanalysts, mathematicians, students,
women and men. Anyone they could find
with skills that could help in the
breaking, analysis, registration and
distribution of the millions of messages,
intercepted by the many Y stations. The
intelligence, produced by GC&CS and
codenamed ULTRA, played a decisive role
in the outcome of the Second World War by
providing vital information to the
commanders at the battlefield.
Unfortunately, all the magnificent
work at Bletchley was top secret and
remained secret for many years after the
war. Churchill called the codebreakers
the geese with golden eggs that never
cackled. The British Secrecy Act
prohibited all personnel to reveal their
excellent work and how important it was
for their county. For outsiders, these
people were ordinary citizens that did
not enlisted in the armed forces or
served their country during the war in
any other way. The ignorant couldn't be
more wrong, but the people involved
couldn't tell the truth. Most of them
took the secret with them in their grave.
After the war, GC&CS relocated to
Cheltenham and most of the documents,
equipment and eight of the ten Colossus
computer were destroyed. Bletchley stayed
the best kept secret of the Second World
War until the 1970's, when information
slowly trickled into the public. In 1991,
Bletchley Park was saved from demolition
and the Bletchley Park Trust was formed
to maintain the site as a museum, devoted
to the codebreakers. The site opened to
visitors in 1993.
Some of the most brilliant people made
important contributions, not only to the
codebreaking but also to science and
technology in general. People like Alan
Turing, regarded as father of modern
computer science, who designed the bombe,
a machine to crack Enigma. Gordon
Welchman made important contributions to
cryptanalysis of Enigma and refined the
bombe. Tommy Flowers developed Colossus,
assisted by Max Newman. Colossus was the
first ever digital computer. Of course,
there were many more nameless people at
Bletchley who helped in many different
ways to break the huge stream of German
message traffic.
And now, finally, their work is
officially recognised. These people, at
least in their 90's now, are eligible for
a commemorative badge. The Foreign
Secretary told he was delighted that the
vital and secret work of Bletchley Park
in the Second World War is being
recognised. On 16 July, a ceremony will
be held in Bletchley Park in the presence
of His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent.
More about this event in this press release.
More information about Bletchley and its
history is found on the Bletchley Park National
Codes Centre website.
To give you an idea of how Bletchley
Park looks now, just wacht the video
below. I can highly recommend a visit to
the museum!
And here's another short video,
honoring the secret work of the Bletchley
Park codebreakers.
Friday, July 24,
2009
Crypto
AG Magazines
The
Crypto AG magazine is published every
four months. The magazine focuses on
various aspects of cryptography such as
ICT security, software and hardware
cryptographic technology, cyber threats,
security management and many more.
In the 1/2009 issue you can
find the chapter "Milestones in the
history of the company part 1: the
1950s". In this article, you'll find
the Crypto AG family tree on mechanical
cipher machines and a description and
images of several Hagelin machines such
as the C-36, C-52 and the CD-57. Some
Telex encryption equipment and one-time
pad are also mentioned. I'm most curious
to the next parts of this series.
The magazines are available in
English, German, Spanish, Russian and
Arabic. They are downloadable from the Cyrpto AG website. If
this magazine is new to you, it's worth
while reading some of the previous
publications.
Monday, August
10, 2009
Enigma
Mathematics
The German Enigma
cipher machine is the best known example
of an ingeniously designed encryption
device that ultimately was a true
disaster, as it proved to be the Achilles
heel of the German forces. Their blind
thrust in the Enigma was partially based
on the theoretical security of the
machine, which was a truly astronomical 3
x 10114 . There's an NSA paper (pdf) on
this theoretical number. It was
absolutely impossible to perform an
exhaustive search on a machine with so
many possible variations, not even with
today's computerpower.
But the German cryptologists were
wrong. Deadly wrong! The Allied
codebreakers did break it and intercepted
and deciphered millions of German
military tactical messages during the
war, revealing many battle orders and
plans, and thus changing the outcome of
war.
In reality, a Wehrmacht (Army) Enigma
machine had a practical security (number
of possible different settings), of only
1.07 x 1023. Now, this is still a huge
number. To give you an idea of the size
of the number 1.07 x 1023, you need 1.5 x
1015 sheets of paper (0.0039 inch each)
to make a stack from the Earth to the Sun
and with 1.07 x 1023 sheets you can build
roughly 70,000,000 of these stacks! No
wonder the German cryptologists believed
it was secure.
However, the security of a crypto
device is more than key sizes and
numbers, theoretical security and having
to search through all possible
combinations. On my website you can find
all the facts and figures about Enigma's
mathematical security. There's also a
very good Cryptologia paper by Rebecca Ann Ratcliff
on the misleading statistics on Enigma
and how dangerous it can be to rely on
such theoretical security.
Wednesday, August
19, 2009
Enigma
Challenge News
On
August, 17, Martin Eklöf from Sweden was
the 20th person to break all 10 messages
of the Enigma
Cipher Challenge. He did it in an
incredible four days and used software he
wrote himself (in C language) especially
to crack the Enigma messages.
Congratulations to Martin!
Meanwhile, the competition is running
for more than three years now and no less
than 126 brave codebreakers joined this
challenge. New competitors keep entering
the challenge. If you want to give it a
try, don't hesitate. You don't require
any professional crypto skills or be a
math geek. Some logical thinking and a
bit of persistence will do the job and
gets you in the Table of Honor.
Friday, August
21, 2009
Crypto
Museum
Paul
Reuvers and Marc Simons finally found the
time to merge all their wonderful
information and photos of cipher machines
into a beautiful website. The Crypto Museum website
is a refreshingly new site with lots of
information on many cipher machines such
as the well known German Enigma, various
Hagelins, the Swiss Nema, the American
M-209, KL-7 and SIGABA, but also less
known machines. The Swedish Transvertex,
the Gretacoder, several crypto devices
from Philips, Siemens and many many more.
Don't forget to click the 'More
Information' link on each item, which
brings you to more detailed information
and images. By clicking the numerous
thumbnails that accompany each machine
you can view hundreds of superb and very
detailed photos they took of these
marvels. But there's more!
They also collected information and
took photos of spy radio sets, burst
encoders and several direction finders.
Some of these are true Cold War jewels.
The site is still under construction,
although the collection is quite
impressive already. A Kits section, News
section and a Shop are in the pipe-line.
Paul and Marc are by the way the
developers of the Enigma E, the
electronic kit that works exactly like
the real thing.
Good information on old crypto
machines is rare, and good websites on
these machines are hardly available
(Jerry Proc is one of the few). The
Crypto Museum website is therefore a
unique initiative with an unmatched
collection of high quality images. A true
delight of the senses, molded into a well
designed and synoptic website. I can only
urge you to visit the Crypto Museum website.
A must! The list of cipher machines is
found on this page, but as
I mentioned before, there's much more to
discover. Now, go... go!
Friday, September
25, 2009
TSEC/KL-7
Simulator
I just finished and uploaded my newest
cipher machine simulation. It's an
accurate simulation of the KL-7 Cipher
Machine, codenamed ADONIS or POLLUX. The
KL-7 was an off-line rotor cipher
machine, developed in the late 1940's by
the American Armed Forces Security Agency
(AFSA) and introduced by the newly formed
National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952.
The KL-7 is one of those Cold War
beauties with a remarkable history.
The new freeware KL-7 simulator
provides an authentic look and feel with
its hands-on approach. With all known
surviving KL-7’s sanitized, stripped
from all rotor and stepping unit wiring,
this simulator is the only remaining way
to actually work with this beautiful
machine. After my Enigma, M-209 and
Hagelin BC-52 sims, this new sim again
gives you the chance to actually work
with a famous crypto machine, and use all
nuts and bolts just as an operator did on
the real machine. There's even an option
to rewire all rotors yourself to
individualize the machine.
Most of the men who actually worked
with this machine are at least well in
their sixties or seventies, and the sim
is an attempt to keep the history about
that magnificent machine alive. The
simulator comes with a 15 page manual,
including the technical details and the
history of the KL-7.
You can download
the KL-7 sim on my website and all
your comments and feedback are most
welcome. Enjoy it!
Thursday, October
01, 2009
US
Strategic Intelligence on the USSR
The National Security Archive
recently published new documents on the The Nuclear Vault,
its Nuclear Documentation Project. Many
previously classified interviews with
former Soviet officials reveal that US
Strategic Intelligence exaggerated the
aggressiveness of the Soviets during the
Cold War. The interviews give a unique
insight on the Soviet strategic weapons
policy and decision-making during the
Cold War.
Apparently, the Soviets, who always
assumed a first strike by the US, tried
to keep a nuclear superiority in terms of
numbers only for defensive reasons.
Although the Soviet military preferred a
proportional response to an attack, they
didn't believe that a nuclear war could
be limited. The interviews confirm that
the USSR never had the intend to launch a
first strike, but did consider a
preemptive attack in case of a real
threat. With a US first strike scenario
in mind, they believed their nuclear
overweight would deter the US of
executing a first strike. The Soviet
military was convinced that a
conventional superior Warsaw Pact could
stop a NATO offensive without using
nuclear weapons, but feared a response
with tactical nuclear weapons that would
escalate to the use of strategic weapons.
They knew a nuclear assault on NATO
forces in Europe would cause an
ecological disaster that would also
affect Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union. This lead to a situation where the
USSR was trying to avoid war at all
costs, but if attacked, would use any
weapons they had, leading to an all-out
nuclear war. This means that a US policy
of keeping up with the USSR might have
been an unnecessary and dangerous path
towards an involuntary and catastrophic
response by the Soviets. The failing US
assessment of the Soviet threat could
have caused a situation of "you get
what you asked for". Fortunately, it
never came that far (I wouldn't be here
any more to write this).
The many interviews with all those
former Soviet officers, analysts and
important decision makers, and their
views on nuclear deterrence issues are a
most fascinating read. All documents are
available for download at This Nuclear Vault page.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Silent
Warriors
September
2, 1958. A four-engined C-130 transport
aircraft from the US 7406th Support
Squadron with tail number 60528 is flying
along the Turkish-Soviet border. Six crew
members and eleven US Airforce Security
Service (USAFSS) personnel are on board.
The aircraft is flying in Turkish
airspace, from Incirlik to Trabzon, and
its mission is to gather intelligence by
orbiting near the Soviet border. They are
instructed to stay 100 miles from Soviet
airspace. The crew reports passing over
Trabson at an altitude of 25,500 feet and
acknowledges a weather report.
Soviet air defense radars are tracking
the C-130. At 1440 hours, four MiG-17
interceptors from the 25th Fighter
Regiment's Yerevan base are scrambled and
are heading toward the C-130. Suddenly,
the C-130 mysteriously deviates from his
route, turns east and crosses the border
into Soviet Armenia. According to the
Soviets, they entered their airspace at
1507 hours. The first two Soviet
interceptors arrive at 1508 hours and
Senior Lieutenant Lopatkov fires several
warning shots at 1509. The pilots of the
C-130 start to maneuver and climb to an
higher altitude. Meanwhile, the other two
MiG arrive and the pilots request
permission to engage the C-130. At 1511
hours, their Command gives permission to
attack the C-130. All four MiGs attack
the airplane in turn, using their cannon
and rockets.
A C-130 at NSA, refurbished to resemble
C-130A-II #60528
The camera of the third MiG captures
the C-130 with its left outboard engine
on fire and the fourth MiG pilot reports
the C-130 breaking up before his attack.
Seven minutes after the first attack, the
C-130 crashes and explodes on impact,
killing all seventeen crew members. It
takes four days for the United States to
confront the Soviets with the
disappearing of their spy flight. On
September 12, Soviet authorities
acknowledged that they found an aircraft
that 'apparently crashed' on their
territory. Five months later, the US goes
public on a United Nations meeting and
present tape recordings of intercepted
conversations between the Soviet fighter
pilots during the attack on the C-130.
The Soviets continue to deny any
involvement in the shootdown. The remains
of the six crew members were returned.
There was no word on the eleven USAFSS
members that were aboard the C-130.
This wasn't the first nor the last.
During the Cold War period, more than 40
reconnaissance aircraft were shot down.
Flying these spy missions was a risky
business and the reconnaissance programs
were kept secret. The public never knew
about these losses and their families and
fellow soldiers were left to mourn alone.
The end of the Cold War allowed the US to
release some information and pay tribute
to these Cold War warriors. In 1991,
Russian President Yeltsin began releasing
information on the shoot down. In 1993, a
US Army graves excavation team recovered
an ID tag that belonged to a USAFSS
technician aboard 60528.
On the National Security Agency (NSA)
website, there's a special page on the C-130 Shootdown,
with the story on aircraft 60528 and
declassified documents with additional
information. You can also listen to the
actual recordings and read the
transcripts of the intercepted radio
traffic between the MiG pilots as they
engage the C-130. A good moment to stand
still for a moment and remember the
soldiers, fallen in the silent war. It's
all found on this page. The
Aerial Reconnaissance memorial at the National Vigilance Park,
near the NSA building, honors these
silent warriors.
There are some
interesting podcast interviews, related
to espionage, on the website of the
Centre for Counterintelligence and
Security Studies (CI Centre). The first
one is a talk with CI Centre President
David Major about the unmasking of MI6
officer George Blake, the KGB mole and
who revealed the Berlin tunnel SIGINT
operation to the Soviets. Michael
Goleniewski, a Russian Spy in Poland,
passed information to the CIA which lead
to the surveillance of KGB spy handler
Konon Molody, aka Gordon Lonsdale. This
resulted in the arrest of the Portland
spy ring. Goleniewski also revealed that
a mole was operating in the MI6, British
foreign Intelligence. Further
investigation by MI5 lead to George Blake
(photo), who knew about the Berlin tunnel
from the earliest beginning of the
planning. The David Major talk is
available as part
1 and part
2.
The second podcast is
an interview with former KGB Major
General Oleg Kalugin about Kim Philby,
one of the most notorious spies ever.
Philby (photo), headed the Soviet
counter-espionage section of Britain's
Secret Intelligence Service and, at the
same time, was a successful Soviet agent,
causing devastating damage to Western
Intelligence. After the defection of KGB
agent Golitsyn his treason was exposed
and Philby fled to the Soviet Union.
After being received as an hero, he
settled in Moscow and received a pension.
Without any goals or challenges in his
life, Philby started drinking heavily.
Oleg Kalugin was put on his case and
reintroduced him in the KGB, asked his
help on some cases, and let him give
lectures, which gave a Philby new goals
in his life. The Kalugin interview is
available at
this podcast link.
These podcasts are available on the CI
Centre Podcast page, where
you can find many other fascinating talks
and interview. More info on my weblog
about the Berlin
tunnel and KGB
Geneneral Kalugin.
And here are two videos from the Cold
War Spies series about and with George
Blake and Kim Philby.
Monday, October
12, 2009
ELINT
at NSA
The
National Security Agency (NSA) just
published an NSA paper about the history
of Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) at the
National Security Agency. ELINT is all
information that is obtained from
electronic signals, other than speech or
text. Within ELINT there are two main
branches, Technical and Operational
ELINT.
Technical ELINT or TechELINT is the
interception and analysis of signals that
origin from radars, weapons systems,
navigation systems and such, in order to
retrieve information on how these systems
work, perform and how they are used.
TechELINT is useful to determine what
technology the opponent applies, the
capabilities of his equipment and how to
take countermeasures against his systems.
Operational ELINT or OpELINT is
focused on the interception of all kinds
of signals on specific locations, in
order to find out the opponent's location
and structure. OpELINT determines the
operational structure (order of battle)
of the opponent forces, the so-called
Electronic Order of Battle (EOB). This,
of course, is important to assess his
strength and provides vital tactical
information on the battlefield.
The paper describes the origins of
modern ELINT in the Second World War, and
later on the establishing of the
Army-Navy Electronics Evaluation Group
(ANEEG) within the Department of Defense.
NSA eventually took over the ELINT
operations in close cooperation with
other agencies such as the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) with its
satellites and the Navy aircraft
platforms. The paper gives a good
overview on the history of NSA's ELINT
mission and its systems. You can find it
at the NSA
website, the Cryptome website or
download at
this link (zip).
Tuesday, October
13, 2009
USAFSS
Misawa History Page
The USAFSS Misawa website
contains a well documented history page.
The United States Air Force Security
Service (USAFSS) was the Air Force
intelligence from 1948 until 1979. After
some name changes, the service is
currently known as the Air Force
Intelligence, Surveillance and
Reconnaissance Agency (AF ISR). I've
published a post, earlier this month, on
the USAFSS Silent
Wariors and the shootdown of one of
their C-130's.
The Misawa history page
contains three excellent pdf documents: USAF Intelligence History
Timeline brings the complete story
from the USAFSS in 1948 to the AF ISR
Agency in 2008, USAFSS - An Enlisted
Command about its unique enlisted
force, and the NSA 50th Anniversary
publication about the National Security
Agency's history between 1952 and 2002.
These extensive documents provide a
detailed overview on Signals and
Electronic Intelligence in the US Air
force and NSA.
Wednesday,
November 04, 2009
DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency DARPA is
a most unique agency. In contrast to
other agencies and commercial firms they
are blessed with the freedom to fail.
Although this might sound odd, this
approach, and of course the associated
budget, are making the impossible
possible. DARPA is a frontier in
innovative technology with breakthroughs
in many different fields of military and
other technology.
Created in 1958, DARPA has been
responsible for early research and
development of experimental airplanes,
stealth technology such as multifaceted
surfaces, radar-absorbent materials,
infrared shielding and heat dissipation.
They were pioneer in missile technology,
target acquisition systems, guiding radar
and Laser systems. DARPA is involved in
new material technologies for fighter
aircraft and special radars for UAV's
(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). Satellites
are another field of interest for DARPA.
Often, research and prototypes failed.
These failing projects however were often
the cradle for new technologies and
materials, which were developed as a part
of these projects. Sometimes, they
developed things that would not be
applicable untile many years after. They
invented the future, so to speak.
But who can explain this better than
DARPA. The 14 page paper Fifty Years of Inventing
the Future is a good overview of
DARPA's history from 1958 to 2008. In the
Multimedia section of their Newsroom
there's a great 25 minutes documentary on
the history of DARPA in three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3 (worthwhile
downloading by right-clicking the links).
More interesting information is found on
DARP's history page and
their video page. They also
have a PodCast with
downloadable mp3 interviews about DARPA
projects.
Monday, November
09, 2009
Fall
of the Iron Curtain
Exactly 20 years
ago the Berlin Wall came down. Few young
people realize how important November 9,
1989 actually was and how it effects
their lives today. Before that date, the
world was divided into East and West and
this wasn't merely geographically.
Virtually every country on the globe had
taken side, willingly or not. The Cold
War raged over the world for almost 45
years and it was often far from cold in
many Asian, African, Middle eastern and
South American countries.
The fall of the Berlin Wall wasn't the
beginning of the end, but became a symbol
of the dissolving of the Iron Curtain and
the start of the reunification of the
(East) German Democratic Republic and the
(West) German Federal Republic. It was
the result of a long struggle for
independence in several countries of the
Soviet Union. A struggle that was
initiated bravely by the Polish trade
union Solidarnosc, publicly and strongly
supported by the Polish born Pope John
Paul II.
The fall of the Wall without any
violence or intervention by East German
or Soviet forces encouraged other
countries to initiate their own fight for
independence. Soon after, the Soviet
Union collapsed which changed the global
picture completely. There's much
information available on the Internet
about the Wall, why and how it was build,
how it was to live behind the Wall before
1989 and how it changed the world.
The Guardian's Berlin Wall: 20 Years On
brings a five episode video series with
the complete story on the Berlin Wall.
The Woodrow Wilson Center presents many
important documents on The Rise and Fall of the
Berlin Wall, a part of their Cold War
International History Project. Escape from the GDR
is a very good six-part 50 minutes
documentary on Youtube about the history
of the Wall. More video's are found on
the English pages of the Chronik der Mauer
website. Another great resource is Dismantling the Iron
Curtain on the National Security
Archive.If you want to discover how the
Wall was constructed and its military
aspects, I can highly recommend US Army Border Operations.
More about the Cold War is found on this
blog post. Lots of info to read and
videos to watch but certainly worth
while!
Wednesday,
November 11, 2009
Aldrich
Ames
Aldrich Ames is
without doubt the most damaging American
spy ever. Ames was a CIA employee for 31
years and spent most of his career in the
Directorate of Operations (DO), which is
responsible for carrying out CIA
clandestine operations around the globe.
He had access to virtually all CIA
operations against the former Soviet
Union and later Russia, and to the names
of recruited Soviet Intelligence officers
and agents that operated in the Soviet
Union. Ames' betrayal at the height of
the Cold War caused the imprisonment of
many CIA sources and the execution of at
least ten agents in the Soviet Union. His
was able to carry out his espionage
activities without detection for almost
nine years.
After his first 1969 overseas
assignment to Ankara, Turkey, he returned
in to CIA headquarters in 1972 where he
spent four years in the Soviet-East
European Division (SE) of the DO. After a
five year tour in New York he was
stationed for two years in Mexico City in
1982 and continued to specialize in
Soviet cases. When he returned to
headquarters in 1983, he was made
counterintelligence branch chief for
Soviet operations. In September 1989,
after a tour in Rome, Italy, Ames
returned to the SE Division and was
assigned to the office that supported all
Soviet and East European operations in
Europe. In 1990, he was reassigned to the
Counterintelligence Center (CIC).
The astonishing about his CIA career,
which gave him access to the most
sensitive operations and documents, was
the fact that he held all these positions
regardless serious personal and
professional misconduct, violation of
security rules, large expenditures he
could not account for with his CIA
salary, a serious drinking problem and a
generally poor performance on his CIA
posts. The Ames case was a failure of the
system with an excessively tolerant
bureaucracy within the CIA, where
security was lax and ineffective and
where his serious misconduct was never
recorded on paper.
As investigations later showed, Ames
walked into the Soviet Embassy in
Washington in April 1985 and handed over
CIA files to the duty officer. It was the
start of a nine years spying career with
numerous meetings with the KGB (Soviet
Intelligence) on his tours in Mexico City
and Rome. During these meetings, and
later on through dead-drops in the United
States, Ames provided the KGB with a huge
quantity of highly sensitive documents
about U.S. foreign, defense and security
policies, CIA operations against the
Soviet Union and the names of virtually
all Soviet agents of the CIA. Ames
received substantial payments for the
information he provided. This enabled him
to purchase a new Jaguar and a $540,000
home with cash. In total, the KGB paid
over $1.8 million and $900,000 more had
been set aside for him.
In 1985, CIA started investigating the
leaks, the ever failing operations, and
their vanishing agents. It took nine
years, two special CIA and FBI task
forces and an Inspector General report to
find out who was the mole and how it was
possible that Ames could continue to spy
for nine years, despite his suspicious
behaviour. On February 21, 1994, agents
from the FBI arrested Aldrich Hazen Ames
on charges of conspiracy to commit
espionage on behalf of Russia and the
former Soviet Union.
The 55 page document "Assessment
of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage
Case" by the U.S. Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence is a very
detailed record on Aldrich Ames' career,
his espionage activities, what went wrong
at the CIA during the mole hunt and how
he was finally caught. You can read or
download the report at this Hanford link
(right-click and save target as...) or
read it at the CI Centre website.
More about Ames is found on Crime Library. The
National Security Archive has an eight
page interview with Ames.
On youtube you can find the movie Aldrich Ames: Traitor
Within (in 10 parts), which depicts
pretty well why and how Ames became a
traitor, and how the mole hunt brought
him to a stop. Below there's also the
Cold War Spies episode on Ames
Monday, November
23, 2009
Soviet
Military Journals
The
CIA recently released a large number of
sensitive Soviet and Warsaw Pact military
journals from 1961 to 1984. These
declassified documents give an insight in
Soviet strategy and military studies in a
wide range of subjects.
Developments in missile weapons
programs, training, communications,
intelligence, combat support, troop
movements, combat against enemy missile
submarines, use of nuclear power,
electronic warfare, organizational
structures. You name it, it's there.
Hundreds of documents, some of them
previously classified as top secret. A
great resource on Soviet military
capabilities.
Some interesting journals related to
communications (1962 - 1976):
The complete list of more than eight
hundred documents is published on the
CIA's Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) Electronic Reading Room.
Quite a few hours of reading fun!
Sunday, December
13, 2009
Secure
Passwords with Diceware
Good
passwords or passphrases are crucial.
They are used as login to protect your
computer or e-mail accounts, to encrypt
files or to verify that you are who you
say you are, and above all, to protect
your privacy. It is obvious that no one
should be able to guess your password or
devise an automated attack, fast enough
to go through all possible combinations.
Picking a good password isn't that
easy. It should be easy to remember (but
not for the bad guys) and at the same
time be strong enough. You could use the
commonly suggested combinations of lower
and upper case letters, punctuations and
symbols. This isn't the most convenient
solution.
Diceware
is another way to compose strong password
phrase. A Dice passphrases is a
combination of words, selected from a
list of 7776 words. No fancy software,
on-line generated stuff or complicated
algorithms. Each word is selected
randomly by throwing a dice five times
(65=7776). A combination of five words
gives 28.418 possible combinations,
comparable with a 64 bit key, which is
pretty strong and sufficient for general
use. Six words provide a 77 bit strength
and seven words 90 bits, which is more
than sufficient for today's and future
computer power. Since all combinations
are completely random, there's no other
way to find the passphrase, other than
searching trough all possible
combinations, which is an infeasible
task.
All you need is the Diceware word list
and a dice, and to memorize five or more
words. And it's all for free! All about
Diceware is found on Arnold Reinhold's Diceware website.
Meanwhile, the Dice word list is
available in many different languages.
It's the perfect method to select
mathematically strong and secure
passwords.
Friday, December
18, 2009
Enigma
Patents
The Crypto Museum website
has published a large number of original
patents, related to the German Enigma
cipher machine. These documents, dated
from 1918 to 1923, show the development
of the Enigma machine and contains a
large number of detailed technical
drawings. Electrical circuits, different
types of ciphering wheels and various
mechanisms to advance them, printing
systems and much more.
Some of the patents were filed by
German engineer Arthur Scherbius, others
by firms such as Gewerkschaft Securitas
of Berlin and Chiffriermaschinen AG, both
related to Scherbius. However, similar
patents were filed by firms in the United
States, the Netherlands, France and the
United Kingdom, some of them related to
Germany based companies.
In 2006 the CIA
released some historically significant
documents on Heinz Felfe, the former head
of the West German office of
Counter-Intelligence against the Soviets.
Felfe was arrested in 1961 and charged
with espionage for the KGB, the very same
service he was supposed to combat.
The documents are of great importance.
They show in detail how both Soviet and
Western Intelligence Services hired,
recruited and exploited a large number of
former Nazi SS officers. Many of them
occupied crucial posts during the Cold
War, a tremendous security risk to the
Allies
During the Second World War, Heinz
Felfe was a Nazi SS officer with the SD
Sicherheitsdienst, the Foreign
Intelligence branch of the SS. After the
war he was recruited in Münster by
British Intelligence. Their cooperation
ended in 1950 when he was suspected of
working for the Soviets. Felfe however
managed to get a job in the
Counter-Intelligence section of the
Gehlen Organization, the predecessor of
the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), West
German Intelligence. This agency,
sponsored by the US Army and the CIA, was
lead by general Reinhard Gehlen, the
former head of WWII German intelligence
on the Eastern Front.
Felfe’s superiors in the Gehlen
Organization, many of whom had also
worked during WWII for Nazi intelligence
organizations, were themselves Soviet
agents. This cleared the path for Felfe's
advances in the hierarchy of West German
Intelligence. In 1955 he became head of
the counter-intelligence against the
Soviets, at the same time being a Soviet
agent himself. No wonder the Gehlen
Organization had a disappointing record
in supplying valuable intelligence on the
Warsaw Pact.
A higher living standard than his wage
could provide, his often expressed
bitterness on the Allied destruction of
Dresden, his criticism on Western
democracy, clues from Soviet defectors
and information, collected by the CIC (US
Army Counterintelligence Corps)
eventually led to his arrest by West
German authorities in 1961. In 1969 he
was released to East Germany in exchange
for three West German spies.
Heinz Felfe caused enormous damage and
embarrassment to Western Intelligence.
His position enabled him to obtain
information from his and many other West
German offices such as the Bundesamt für
Verfassungsschutz BfV (West German
Federal Intelligence) and the Foreign
Ministry. According to the CIA, Felfe
compromised a large number of CIA agents,
about 15,000 documents and sabotaged most
counter-espionage, surveillance and
arrest operations against Soviet agents
in West Germany.
Last year, the Frankfurter Allgemeine
(German) published an article about the
FSB - Russia's Federal Security Service -
honoring Heinz Felfe at this 90th
birthday (translated version here).
Felfe published his full biography in
1988 in East-Germany (ISBN: 3373002737) .
This book, which was not for export, is
more complete than the West version.
Felfe died in May last year.
Wednesday,
December 23, 2009
Cipher
Machine Simulators
The world of cipher machines has
always been a mysterious and exciting
story of military and diplomatic secrets,
codes and the protection of vital
information. In the passed years I wrote
several accurate simulations of the most
notorious machines in the 20th century.
If you haven't discovered them yet, check
out the WW2 German Enigma and Hagelin M-209, the
Cold War Hagelin BC-52 and the
American KL-7 ADONIS. They are
available as freeware download on my
website.
As a little preview you can click this
picture to see how you can turn your
desktop into a Top Secret Communication
Center. A fun way to spend the Christmas
holidays!
(Click the picture to see it at full
size)
Saturday,
December 26, 2009
Mythbusters
on RSA Conference
Discovery Channel's Mythbusters,
notorious for building and testing the
most crazy things, were at the RSA Conference 2009
last April, to present their XXL
Jefferson Disk. The RSA Conference
organisation wanted an original
demonstration of a crypto device and
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage designed
and built this super-sized Bazeries
Cylinder. The device was later auctioned
on e-bay, with the proceeds to the EFF -
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Jamie and Adam had distributed a
ciphertext among the conference
participants and demonstrated the
decryption of that text on their huge
Jefferson Disk the following day. This
was followed by an entertaining interview
with Adam and Jamie, explaining how their
opposite characters are the secret to
success during the development of the
Mythbusters experiments. Adam even
mentions that he owns an Enigma-E, Paul
Reuvers' and Marc Simons' well known
electronic version of the Enigma machine.
You can watch the video of
Adam's and Jamie's demonstration (thanks
to David Goodman for the tip) which is
found on the RSA Conference 2009 Keynote Webcast. The
webcast page is really worth a visit as
you can view video's of many conference
speakers, all of them key players in
cryptography science and industry.
The
SIGABA was probably the most secure rotor
cipher machine during WW2. The SIGABA ECM
Mark II (CSP 888/889) had three banks of
five rotors each. One set of five rotors
was used to encrypt the alphabet. The
other two banks of rotors were used to
scramble the signals that control the
movement of the encryption rotors. The
result is a very irregular and complex
stepping of the encryption rotors. The
SIGABA was a most secure machine and its
message traffic has never been broken. It
remained in service until the 1950's,
when it was replaced by more modern
systems such as the KL-7 and on-line
ciphering machines.
I just uploaded a new
version of my freeware Numbers tool. With
Numbers 6.2 you can generate and print
standard one-time pads, one-time
worksheets or custom number sequences
that are customizable in various ways.
You can also view and print five
different one-time pad letters-to-figures
conversion tables.
On the US Department of
Defense PERSEREC website (Defense
Personnel Security Research Center)
there's an interesting collection of 
I
just finished an update of my US M-209
Cipher Machines Simulator. The M-209 was
an American licenced version of the
Hagelin C-38. In 1940, Boris Hagelin went
to the United States to promote his C
Type pin-and-lug machines which resulted
in the largest sale ever of crypto
machines. The US military selected his
C-38 as tactical ciphering device and
designated it as M-209. By the end of the
Second World War over 140,000 of these
small M-209 machines were produced in the
US.
The National
Security Agency (
Last
September, a spy scandal has sent shock
waves through 
Today,
we rely heavily on modern technology to
communicate. Telephone, mobile or
satellite phones, it's so easy to use.
So, why bother learning a 163 year old
system called Morse? Morse is one of the
most basic ways to communicate, but also
one of the most reliable and flexible.
You can send Morse by land line, by
radio, with a signal lamp, or even as an
alternative to the tap code, by replacing
a dot (did) by a knock and a dash (dah)
by a double knock. But the probably most
important advantage, the system uses a
very sophisticated noise filtering and
error correction system: the human ear
and brain! More about Morse on 
Unless
you're living on another planet, you
probably have noticed there's a financial
crisis. I can imagine that many people
are dreaming of their own Enigma machine,
but currently have more useful things to
do with their money. The really
unfortunate among us could try out Mike
Koss' 
At the New Zealand 
The
Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS)
of the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische
Republiek), commonly known as the Stasi,
is widely recognized as the most
effective Intelligence agency of all
former Soviet states, and the HVA (Haupt
Verwaltung Aufklaerung) under Markus Wolf
is probably the most successful Foreign
Intelligence service ever to have
existed. With an enormous number of
agents, operating in the West, the HVA
with its HUMINT (Human Intelligence) was
considered to be the most important
Intelligence source for both East Germany
and the Soviet Union.
The
direct link between United States and the
Soviet Union, and later the Russian
Federation, is a well known legacy of the
Cold War. The Cuban missile crisis,
generally regarded as the moment in which
the Cold War came closest to nuclear war,
made the US and USSR realise that
reliable and secure communications are
essential in event of a crisis.
In my previous post I
already mentioned the ETCRRM, a device to
encrypt teletype signals with one-time
tapes. Systems that use the principle of
one-time key encryption were very popular
until the 1980's, because of their
absolute security. Most of these machines
encrypted five-bit teletype signals by
mixing (Exclusive Or function - XOR ) the
plain signal with a one-time key tape.
Each one-time tape consisted of truly
random five-bit values and there were
only two copies of each tape, one for
both ends of the teletype link. Each tape
was to be used only once, and destroyed
after used.
Noor
Inayat Khan, the exotic in Russia born
descent of an Indian muslim prince, was
the first British female Special
Operations Executive (SOE) agent in WW2
to be sent to occupied France as a
wireless operator. Although some officers
doubted whether she was suitable for SOE
operations, she was infiltrated in June
1943 under the false identity of
Jeanne-Marie Regnier and codename
Madelaine, to occupy the most dangerous
SOE post, Paris.
The
Cryptology
is a wonderful science with a most
interesting history. Unfortunately, few
people know what cryptology actually is,
and what is means to us. Code makers and
code breakers influenced history for
thousands of years and determined
politics and the outcome of many wars in
the past, and it will continue to do so
in the future.
On
the Maryland 
On 21 April,
Lieutenant General Keith Alexander gave a
talk at the RSA Security Conference in
San Francisco. Cryptome published the
transcript of his talk of which the main
topic was cyber security. Keith Alexander
is the director of the National Security
Agency, so he knows what he's talking
about. The talk was a strong pleading for
cooperation between the government,
industry and academia.
Secret Power, 
On
June 5, 2009 the US Department of Justice
announced that US State Department
official Walter Kendall Myers and his
wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers were
arrested on charges of espionage for the
Cuban government for nearly 30 years.
Meyers, now retired, worked at the Bureau
of Intelligence and Research (
One of the most spectacular
SIGINT operations in the Cold War era was
project PBJOINTLY, the Berlin tunnel. It
was a CIA operation to tap three main
Soviet communications cables in the
Soviet-occupied part of Berlin. Planning
and construction lasted for five years
and started in the late 1940's with
penetrating the office of the East German
post to covertly obtains plans of the
Soviet network. In 1952, they had all
information to determine the ideal
location for the tap, and trial tappings
on other locations were performed.
Nonetheless, after eleven
months of tapping, the tunnel was
discovered on April 21, 1956. Apparently
by accident, when East Germans dug up a
faulty cable. However, later on, British
intelligence discovered that George
Blake, an MI6 officer who was involved
from the earliest beginning of the
planning, had been recruited by the KGB
as early as 1952. He informed his Soviet
contacts as soon as the final location of
the tunnel was planned. The tunnel and
the mole, what's in a name.
Teufelsberg
(Devil's mountain), located in west
Berlin, Germany, has a most unique
history. With its 375 ft (114 m) it is
the highest hill in the Berlin area, and
it's man-made! It is made of 12 million
cubic meter rubble, from about 400,000
destroyed buildings, during the rebuilt
of Berlin after the Second World War.
Exactly
70 years after the Government Code and
Cipher School (GC&CS) began its
codebreaking work, the veterans that
served in Bletchley finally received
official recognition. Finally! Finally!!!
The
Crypto AG magazine is published every
four months. The magazine focuses on
various aspects of cryptography such as
ICT security, software and hardware
cryptographic technology, cyber threats,
security management and many more.
The German Enigma
cipher machine is the best known example
of an ingeniously designed encryption
device that ultimately was a true
disaster, as it proved to be the Achilles
heel of the German forces. Their blind
thrust in the Enigma was partially based
on the theoretical security of the
machine, which was a truly astronomical 3
x 10114 . There's an 
On
August, 17, Martin Eklöf from Sweden was
the 20th person to break all 10 messages
of the 
Paul
Reuvers and Marc Simons finally found the
time to merge all their wonderful
information and photos of cipher machines
into a beautiful website. The 
The 
There are some
interesting podcast interviews, related
to espionage, on the website of the
Centre for Counterintelligence and
Security Studies (
The second podcast is
an interview with former KGB Major
General Oleg Kalugin about Kim Philby,
one of the most notorious spies ever.
Philby (photo), headed the Soviet
counter-espionage section of Britain's
Secret Intelligence Service and, at the
same time, was a successful Soviet agent,
causing devastating damage to Western
Intelligence. After the defection of KGB
agent Golitsyn his treason was exposed
and Philby fled to the Soviet Union.
After being received as an hero, he
settled in Moscow and received a pension.
Without any goals or challenges in his
life, Philby started drinking heavily.
Oleg Kalugin was put on his case and
reintroduced him in the KGB, asked his
help on some cases, and let him give
lectures, which gave a Philby new goals
in his life. The Kalugin interview is
available 
The 
The 
Exactly 20 years
ago the Berlin Wall came down. Few young
people realize how important November 9,
1989 actually was and how it effects
their lives today. Before that date, the
world was divided into East and West and
this wasn't merely geographically.
Virtually every country on the globe had
taken side, willingly or not. The Cold
War raged over the world for almost 45
years and it was often far from cold in
many Asian, African, Middle eastern and
South American countries.
Aldrich Ames is
without doubt the most damaging American
spy ever. Ames was a CIA employee for 31
years and spent most of his career in the
Directorate of Operations (DO), which is
responsible for carrying out CIA
clandestine operations around the globe.
He had access to virtually all CIA
operations against the former Soviet
Union and later Russia, and to the names
of recruited Soviet Intelligence officers
and agents that operated in the Soviet
Union. Ames' betrayal at the height of
the Cold War caused the imprisonment of
many CIA sources and the execution of at
least ten agents in the Soviet Union. His
was able to carry out his espionage
activities without detection for almost
nine years.
The
CIA recently released a large number of
sensitive Soviet and Warsaw Pact military
journals from 1961 to 1984. These
declassified documents give an insight in
Soviet strategy and military studies in a
wide range of subjects.
The 
In 2006 the CIA
released some historically significant
documents on Heinz Felfe, the former head
of the West German office of
Counter-Intelligence against the Soviets.
Felfe was arrested in 1961 and charged
with espionage for the KGB, the very same
service he was supposed to combat.
Discovery Channel's 