For you conspiracy theorists. CIA owned a crypto company back in the day.

[Variable]

For those of you who are IT illiterate, apparently a Swiss company that supplied encryption capabilities worldwide was actually owned by the CIA. What this did was allow them to decrypt secure communications. The company still exists, although reading the article it sounds like the intelligence coup was centered around 70's-80's era communications, still very interesting. I always tell people who ask, the only defense/privacy you have with your internet traffic is you are a rain drop in an ocean of data. If you get on the right peoples radar all hope of privacy of your communication is a pipe dream.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...ity/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/

V

 

[noway2]

Sounds interesting, but it's behind a paywall.

 

[sixtysevensg]

Just gotta stay gray.

 

[Variable]

Works for me. Maybe i am special.

 

[InvisibleOne]

Maybe paranoid, but I just assume most of the VPN's are actually run by either the NSA or the FSB.
The CIA's investment in FB has outperformed their wildest dreams.

 

[noway2]

Maybe paranoid, but I just assume most of the VPN's are actually run by either the NSA or the FSB.

Tor was originally created by the NSA, back when they weren't quite as rogue and Uncle wasn't as paranoid about insurrection from within.

 

[Disgruntled Seabee]

 

[Ikarus1]

They also owned an airline in Vietnam, and ran drugs back and forth to LA in the 90s.

 

[Variable]

Tor was originally created by the NSA, back when they weren't quite as rogue and Uncle wasn't as paranoid about insurrection from within.

I was not aware of that.

 

[ProfMagoo(ret)]

 

[Variable]

Tor was originally created by the NSA, back when they weren't quite as rogue and Uncle wasn't as paranoid about insurrection from within.

hmm, any proof of this?

 

[noway2]

hmm, any proof of this?

Actually I was somewhat mistaken. It was originally created by the Navy and then DARPA with funding from a CIA spinoff called BBG as "onion routing" before it was released as open source. It has supposedly since been rewritten several times over to where it really no longer resembles the original code. The name Tor comes from The Onion Routing Project aka Tor Project.

What I was thinking of originally was the word that the NSA operates several exit nodes because they are a great place to spy.

What I may have also gotten it confused with was SELinux, which was created as a collaboration between the NSA and Red Hat.