Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War
- Reference: 1589781906
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/18/maximator_euro_spy_alliance_falklands_war/
- Source link:
Flowing from revelations made in German-language news reports earlier this year that Swiss cipher machine company [1]Crypto AG was owned by the CIA and German counterpart the BND during most of the Cold War, an academic paper has described the Maximator alliance which grew from the Crypto AG compromise.
Authored by Professor Bart Jacobs of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, his [2]in-depth article , titled Maximator: European signals intelligence cooperation, from a Dutch perspective shines a light on Cold War security and SIGINT from an oft-ignored perspective, at least in the Anglosphere.
As related by Jacobs, Maximator was founded in 1976 and brought together Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands as a northwest European version of the Anglosphere's Five Eyes. The latter comprises Britain, America, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand - what Sir Winston Churchill called the English-speaking nations.
Named after a Bavarian beer brand popular with BND spies at the agency's Munich HQ, Maximator came about in part because of "the emergence of signals intelligence via satellites, which required substantial investment" to forcibly decrypt. None of its members felt able to tackle the subject on its own.
Maximator, GCHQ and the Falklands War
Dutch eavesdropping agency TIVC was one of the key parts of the Maximator alliance, playing a very important role in helping Britain during the 1982 Falklands War. When the Argentine junta invaded the British South Atlantic island on 2 April, Britain assembled a military task force which sailed and flew halfway around the world to expel the invaders and liberate the local population.
Among Britain's means to defeat the Argentinians was good old-fashioned signals intelligence, or SIGINT: in everyday English, breaking the crypto on the Argentine military's communications so their plans and intentions could be read. Such work is in the DNA of GCHQ, which grew out of the Government Code and Cipher School in WWII.
Yet GCHQ didn't have a full insight into the cipher machines the Argentinians were using. At the time, those were supplied by Crypto AG. Unfortunately for the South Americans, the models they had – HC550s and HC570s – included "rigged" algorithms, deliberately undermined "by the BND and the CIA, via their ownership of Crypto AG".
“A directly involved Dutch source states that at that stage a specialist from TIVC travelled to GCHQ and explained how the HC500 Crypto AG devices for Argentinian naval and diplomatic communications worked; subsequent solution of the ciphers was left to GCHQ itself,” said Prof Jacobs, who spoke to multiple former Maximator personnel while writing his paper.
We're reading their comms, said MP at war's outbreak
Yet Argentina figured out that their comms were being eavesdropped upon, which Prof Jacobs attributed to a statement in the House of Commons by then-Labour MP Ted Rowlands, who still sits in the House of Lords as Baron Rowlands to this day. While criticising Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on 3 April 1982 – the day after the invasion – Rowlands [3]told the House :
Last night the Secretary of State for Defence asked "How can we read the mind of the enemy?" I shall make a disclosure. As well as trying to read the mind of the enemy, we have been reading its telegrams for many years. I am sure that many sources are available to the Government, and I do not understand how they failed to anticipate some of the dangers that suddenly loomed on the horizon.
At the time no MPs appeared to notice the significance of Rowlands' "disclosure", as the Hansard record shows. Historian Hugh Bicheno, in his 2006 book Razor's Edge: The Unofficial History of the Falklands War , excoriated Rowlands, writing that "this was the precise equivalent of publicly announcing, during World War II, that the Allies had broken the Enigma system used by the Nazis."
Yet Prof Jacobs, in his history of the Maximator alliance, speculated that firm corroboration for the Argentinians may have come from a captured British pilot who was shot down while carrying "information that could only have been obtained via compromised communications".
A [4]list of British aircraft lost during the Falklands War reveals a small number of likely candidates. Although the one pilot actually taken prisoner by the Argentines, then-Flight Lieutenant Jeffrey Glover, [5]said in 2007 he was not interrogated after being fished out of the icy South Atlantic when shot down in May 1982 during a recce mission, it is possible that other British aircraft shot down over land may have contained maps or other documents that Argentinian forces could have recovered.
The public confirmation of Maximator's existence will continue to puzzle and intrigue historians, researchers and those with an interest in Cold War cryptography and SIGINT for years to come. ®
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/11/crypto_ag_backdoored_german_swiss_news_allegs/
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1743538
[3] https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands#column_650
[4] https://www.naval-history.net/F63-Falklands-British_aircraft_lost.htm
[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20070922140253/http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk:80/news/Jump-jet-war-hero-is.3185612.jp
Re: Great name, great beer
They probably tested it with some fake messages and watched for appropriate responses.
Re: Great name, great beer
Yes ... history would strongly suggest that their code would be broken. How long would be the question.
By seeding test messages and looking for a "appropriate respons" (a hint would do) you could gain an insight into your opponents ability to read and understand your messages.
Works in reverse too. Does message match action?
Re: Great name, great beer
Dang, now I need to get somebody to spring for a "business trip" to Munich - I sort of have have an excuse (I think / hope) but we are currently not allowed to travel as per our company's official line. However, since venison stew is more of an autumn dish I have some time!
Re: Re: Great name, great beer
A bit further west than Munich I discovered a great Flemish dish called carbonnade flamande. Beef marinaded in local beer (so dark and strong!) and then stewed in a creuset dish with onions and mushrooms plus various regional herbs for flavour. Serve with frites and side salad. Mouth-watering just thinking about it.
Re: Great name, great beer
That does sound delicious. Too bad Munich is so far away from me.
Re: Great name, great beer
At the moment, everywhere is too far away
Re: Great name, great beer
> a great Flemish dish called carbonnade flamande
Re: Carbonade Flamande
Hmmm. I have a couple of Bottles of OTT (Old Tongham Tasty) that might be ideal for this.
The last of 2019's Onions need eating up and my herb garden is looking pretty good.
That's Sunday Lunch sorted..... Thanks.
How indeed could they.
Aha...
As given in the reference, the ability to decrypt was developed after the invasion.
That may well be true.
The spy agency's nightmare: "Boasting Politicitians"
I suggest to establish, aside from OPSEC, INFOSEC, TRANSEC and SIGSEC, POLSEC; a process that hides critical information about the means of intelligence gathering from your own side, especially politicians. Think an ULTRA equivalent.
I'm pretty sure Intelligence types say the absolute minimum to politicians already. The trouble is, politicians are on top. When they ask a question, Intelligence is supposed to answer.
If you really want politicians to not get information, you wind up with the NSA, an entity that does what it wants and tells lies when asked questions.
What's better ? I really don't know.
> What's better ? I really don't know.
Classic "damned if you do, damned if you don't"
Pilots carrying comprising material
I was a pilot in the RAF at the time of the conflict.Part of our training and pre-flight procedures for operational sorties was to 'sterilise' ourselves of any useful information before 'walking' for the sortie in case of just this sort of eventuality. A pilot wouldn't carry that sort of information in paper form. Even if he did he wouldn't have the time to look at it in flight so why bother taking it?
Re: Pilots carrying comprising material
I bow to your greater knowledge but have always been under the impression that pilots would be given target or intercept details but not told that this has been found from intercepts of enemy communications. That would not stop the enemy concluding that the only way that that position could be found was if their communications had been intercepted and decoded. During WW2 great effort was taken to ensure that such conclusions could not be drawn and I understand that often photo reconnaissance flights were made over targets identified through ULTRA so that the enemy thought the target had been discovered by other means. One of the biggest security problems was the US Navy’s indiscriminate use of ULTRA to intercept refuelling U boats and the high risk that the Germans would conclude (rightly) that the large number of appearances of US forces at such remote points was more than coincidence.
On the beer front many years ago I discovered a small cafe bar in Brussels called “The Beer Circus” which served food cooked with some of the hundred or so local beers it stocked (and there are a lot of very good beers in Belgium) including a sort of chocolate mousse made with Trappist beer. I think is was delicious but have very hazy memories of the place……..
Re: Pilots carrying comprising material
Interesting reading some of the history of this, seems the Germans assumed we could not be decoding their messages because we were not doing it right away (sometimes it took a day or two to break the codes) and they could not believe the codes could be broken, only "pinched". So where it was obvious that a communication had been intercepted they assumed it was by some other mechanism than breaking the code (e.g. someone was passing on the message).
Oh, and at times we messed up acting on the information which made it look unlikely we knew what was going on (this is distinct from intentionally not using the information of course).
Re: Pilots carrying comprising material
I highly recommend "Most Secret War by R.V. Jones's". A fascinating insight into technical skulduggery during WW2
Should have been shot...........
Ted Rowlands should have been executed for effectively acting as a spy, or at least for releasing information valuable to an enemy.
Re: Should have been shot...........
Still time :)
Huawei
And in the 21st Century, all you need are a few compromised bits of backbone infrastucture to read everyone's telegrams ...
Re: Huawei
Only if the telegrams are not end-to-end encrypted.
Oh wait, that is going to be made illegal by dumb politicians, isnt it?
Breaks it angle
CIA had the info, UK and USA are part of 5 eyes, yet, UK had to rely on its European friends.
Our five eyes serve our one friend exclusively.
Re: Breaks it angle
Good thing we haven't been pissing our European neighbours off then isn't it.
Re: Breaks it angle
NATO said it was a policing action so wouldn't get involved, US wanted us to hand it over - something echoed by Hilary Clinton in Chile a few years back. CIA didn't care at all about us.
Re: Breaks it angle
Not what I've read about it. The US State Dept. might not have been helpful, but some other key US departments were.
There is no such verb as "to author"
Repeat after me: there is no such verb as "to author"
We are not Americans.
Re: There is no such verb as "to author"
Author is a verb in UK English. It's in the dictionary and everything. Interestingly, "gullible" is not officially a UK English word.
author
verb [ T ]
UK /ˈɔː.θər/ US /ˈɑː.θɚ/
formal
to write a book, article, etc.:
He has authored more than 30 books.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/author
- HC550s and HC570s – included "rigged" algorithms, deliberately undermined "by the BND and the CIA, via their ownership of Crypto AG"
Today, its Windows, Android, Linux, Dell, Hewlett Packard, a number of telecoms companies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A and many hardware manufacturers. Companies cant talk about secret contracts forced on them by courts, but the spooks have never had it so easy obtaining data be it your school reports, medical records and meta data from your usage of tech like mobile phones, cars, home automation, purchases.
Enjoy your 1984 experience and go back to sleep, Mr Sandman will be along soon to reduce your anxiety.
Great name, great beer
From Augustiner. Delicious dark 7.5% beer. One to drink slowly, and goes great with a venison stew and rye bread. Can understand why the BND staff liked it.
Interesting that news of this group is now open source. But like all good secrets....