Breaking Iranian Codes (Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, June 15, 2003)

[Jack Lloyd]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 03:37:54AM +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com> forwarded:
> 
> >So now the NSA's secret is out.  The Iranians have undoubtedly changed
> >their encryption machines, and the NSA has lost its source of Iranian
> >secrets.  But little else is known.  Who told Chalabi?  Only a few
> >people would know this important U.S. secret, and the snitch is
> >certainly guilty of treason.
> 
> Someone (half-)remembered reading the Crypto AG story in the Baltimore Sun
> several years ago, bragged to Chalabi that the US had compromised Iranian
> crypto, and the story snowballed from there.  The story could have started out
> with a loquacious (Sun-reading) cab driver for all we know.  Some reports have
[...]

Well, most cabbies in Baltimore that I would encounter were too busy doing
drugs or threatening passengers to be reading the Sun regularly, but who knows?

-J