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SRF broadcasting company reported that the Swiss company Omnisec AG had ties to the American intelligence services.
The news follows the revelations made in February by the same media, in collaboration with the German channel ZDF and the Washington Post that the Swiss company Crypto AG was at the center of a large international espionage operation carried out by the CIA and, to a lesser extent, by the German spy agency BND.
Now, it turns out that Omnisec was one of Crypto AG’s biggest competitors, according to SRF sources. Swiss cryptologist and professor Ueli Maurer has been a consultant for Omnisec for years and assured the media that in 1989 the US National Security Agency contacted the Swiss company through him.
Like Crypto AG, the company’s products allow US and German spy services to access messages that their customers deem safe. Omnisec has also sold devices in its OC-500 series to Swiss federal agencies, as well as the country’s largest bank, UBS, and other private Swiss companies, the chain reveals.
Swiss authorities they only noticed that the devices weren’t safe in the mid-2000s. However, it is unclear whether they informed UBS of the case at the time. For its part, the bank told SRF it did not comment on security issues, but had no indication that sensitive data was exposed at the time.
Omnisec, founded in 1987, manufactures voice, fax and data encryption equipment. It dissolved a few years ago. The most recent director of the company, Clemens Kammer, told SRF that the company’s customers “have placed and will continue to place great importance on security, confidentiality, discretion and reliability of business relationships. “.
Some politicians called for more research about these latest accusations which could reveal who, if any, within the Swiss federal government was aware of Omnisec’s business dealings with foreign intelligence services.
The apparent neutrality
Earlier this month, a nine-month investigation by the Swiss Parliamentary Audit Committee (GPDel) found that the Swiss intelligence service knew that the US Central Intelligence Agency had been behind Crypto AG since 1993.
The report says that Swiss intelligence then worked with them to gather information from foreign sources.
Ms. from 120 countries bought encryption devices from the company, which operated under the guise of Swiss neutrality. In reality, the company was owned by the CIA and the German intelligence services, which had access to what Crypto AG encrypted.
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