Originally Posted by
tartare
Nah - bollocks.
Plenty of detail in Bamford's books.
Every diplomatic mission was using Crypto AG's machines.
And No Such Agency was reading eeevvveerrything.
Crypto AG lied like flatfish at the time saying it weren't so.
Read Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace.
And there's irony in current US paranoia about the Chinese.
Given that Fort Meade actually co-operated with the Chinese to spy on the Russians; not widely known.
Another great section in one of Bamford's books - talks about the NSA sigint trucks that travelled along the Sino-Russian border.
All fun and games...
I haven't read those books, but I've been following the hacking scene congresses loosely. No news to me but for the fact that it was indeed 100% owned by the intelligence services for some time and the exact dates when first BND and then the Muricans pulled out.
More interesting to me is how and why this is now hyped by news outlets (some of them quasi state owned). If only Bellingcat had it's finger in the pie as well, I would be sure that it's a campaign by the offenders themselves.