Crypto in a Cuban Crime...

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 12:18 PM -0400 on 9/15/98, Charles Smith of Win Schwartau's FUDFactory
wrote something mildly clueful:


> BUSTED CUBAN SPIES USE CRYPTO
> -----------------------------
> FBI officials are proud that they broke up a small ring of Cuban
> spies in Florida.  The Cuban espionage agents are accused of
> using encryption to encode messages and protect information.
> Expect Director Freeh to use this bust as one of a hand full
> historical examples of "crypto" crimes in his next Congressional
> testimony.  According to his last testimony in August 1998, only
> 17 crimes over the past 10 years have been made more difficult
> for the FBI by encryption.
>
> What the FBI Director won't tell you is that the Cubans have
> been sending enciphered messages to their U.N. mission in New
> York over SHORT-WAVE RADIO for almost 30 years.  The Morse code
> signals are encrypted with a Cuban one-time-pad cipher and
> transmitted from Havana on a nightly basis.  The Cuban encrypted
> transmissions are so regular - some HAM radio operators set
> their clocks by it.

-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'