Knowledge Brings Fear

Herbert O. Yardley: Black Chamber

I just finished reading "The American Black Chamber" by Herbert O. Yardley . Yardley has been more or less the grandfather of the NSA, running the american cryptanalysis department for 16 years, up to 1929. The book became an instant scandal as, it contains many information about how the encryption systems of these days were constructed and solved, as well as a a lot of political hot details. It is a excellent introduction into the mindset of cryptanalysis, how to exploit every scrap of information to find a solution to a particular cryptosystem.

The NSA has introduced Yardley into their all of fame in 1999 and considers the book worth to be on display in their museum . An affordable reprint has been arranged by the Naval Institue Press .

Teufelsberg again

Some readers may remember the entry regarding the old NSA Field Station Teufelsberg in Berlin. The area of the old station can be visited (not entirely legal admittedly) and has unfortunately fallen victim to massive vandalism meanwhile. Documentation from some early hacker expeditions into the buildings and radomes there has been compiled here , so you can see how it looked like before too many drunken hordes of bored, proletarian youth have followed their destructive hobby there.

BND book

I was so lucky to obtain a copy of the currently hottest book in Germany, "Bedingt Dienstbereit" by Norbert Juretzko. Juretzko has been a spook for the german intelligence agency BND and he describes his career there, the people, the operations and the prevailing stupidity and sabotage from above. The BND is trying to prevent the book from beeing distributed. After reading the book, I could fully understand why.

Even if only half of the stuff Juretzko describes is true, the BND will have serious problems finding sources in the future. Their old enemies from the Staatssicherheit must be choking from laughter when reading the book. In the end the old boys network seems to have decided to protect a traitor who sold out whole operations to the russians, because exposing him would have caused too much collateral damage in the establishment. My last remaining illusions about Germany having a professional intelligence evaporated.

In Banks we trust...

Yesterday night when I retrieved some money from an ATM machine of the BBBank in the Reinhardstrasse corner Luisenstrasse in Berlin, I noticed (unfortunately after inserting my card into it...) the rather unsettling display content of the door opening card reader. You can bet I will monitor my bank records rather carefully in the next weeks...