Crypto AG

Summary

Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security founded by Boris Hagelin in 1952. The company was secretly purchased in 1970 by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), and jointly owned until about 1993, with the CIA continuing as sole owner until about 2018. The mission of breaking encrypted communication using a secretly owned company was known as Operation Rubicon. With headquarters in Steinhausen, the company was a long-established manufacturer of encryption machines and a wide variety of cipher devices.