Cypherpunk
Encyclopedia
A cypherpunk is an activist advocating widespread use of strong cryptography
as a route to social and political change.
Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list
, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since the late 1980s.
and punk
, was coined by Jude Milhon
as a pun to describe cyberpunk
s who used cryptography. In November 2006, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary
. The Cypherpunks included several notable computer industry figures, for example Ian Goldberg
, Bram Cohen
and Nikita Borisov
.
was mainly done in secret by military or spy agencies. However, in the '70s, there were two publications that brought it out of the closet, into public awareness. One was the US government publication of the Data Encryption Standard
(DES), a block cipher
which became very widely used. The other was the publication by Whitfield Diffie
and Martin Hellman
of the first publicly available work on public-key cryptography
.
From that time on, people began to discuss cryptography openly and to examine its political and social consequences. Some of the substantial issues involved in these discussions had to do with the potential uses for and dangers of cryptography. Could it be used by criminals to hide their schemes or their profits, in addition to protecting personal privacy or government and corporate secrets? Should strong cryptography be widely used or strictly limited? Some of the speculations and arguments of these early debates fell along lines now referred to as cypherpunk.
In the late '80s, these ideas coalesced into something like a movement.
and cryptography
who originally communicated through the cypherpunks mailing list
, although there were also cypherpunk physical meetings and parties.
The list was started in 1992, peaked around 1997, and has one remaining node as of August 2010: "cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net". At its peak, "cypherpunks" was a very active list with technical discussion ranging over mathematics, cryptography, computer science, political and philosophical discussion, personal arguments and attacks, etc., with some spam thrown in. An email from John Gilmore shows an average of 30 messages a day from December 1, 1996 to March 1, 1999, and suggests that the number was probably higher earlier. There were well over a thousand subscribers at the peak.
For a time, the cypherpunks mailing list was a popular tool with mailbombers, who would subscribe a victim to the mailing list in order to cause a deluge of messages to be sent to him or her. (This was usually done as a prank, in contrast to the style of terrorist referred to as a mailbomber.) This precipitated the mailing list sysop(s) to institute a reply-to-subscribe system. Approximately two hundred messages a day was typical for the mailing list, divided between personal arguments and attacks, political discussion, technical discussion, and early spam.
The cypherpunks mailing list had extensive discussions of the public policy issues related to cryptography and on the politics and philosophy of concepts such as anonymity, pseudonyms, reputation, and privacy. These discussions continue both on the remaining node and elsewhere as the list has become increasingly moribund.
Events such as the GURPS Cyberpunk
raid lent weight to the idea that private individuals needed to take steps to protect their privacy. In its heyday, the list discussed public policy issues related to cryptography, as well as more practical nuts-and-bolts mathematical, computational, technological, and cryptographic matters. The list had a range of viewpoints and there was probably no completely unanimous agreement on anything. The general attitude, though, definitely put personal privacy and personal liberty above all other considerations.
Those wishing to understand the context of the list might refer to the history of cryptography; in the early 90s, the US government considered crypto software a "munition" for export purposes, which hampered commercial deployment with no gain in "national security", as knowledge and skill was not limited to US citizens. (PGP source code was published as a paper book to bypass these regulations and demonstrate their futility.) The US government had tried to subvert cryptography (e.g. by requiring SkipJack and key-escrow). It was also not widely known among that all communications were logged by government agencies (which would later be revealed during the NSA
and AT&T scandals
) though this was taken as an obvious axiom by listmembers.
The original cypherpunk mailing list, and the first list spin-off, "coderpunks", were originally hosted on John Gilmore's toad.com, but after a falling out with the sysop
over moderation, the list was migrated to several cross-linked mail-servers in what was called the "distributed mailing list". The coderpunks list, open by invitation only, existed for a time. Coderpunks took up more technical matters and had less discussion of public policy implications. There are several lists today that can trace their lineage directly to the original Cypherpunks list: the "Cryptography" list (cryptography@metzdowd.com), the "Financial Cryptography" list (fc-announce@ifca.ai), and a small group of closed (invitation-only) lists as well.
Toad.com continued to run with the existing subscriber list, those that didn't unsubscribe, and was mirrored on the new distributed mailing list, but messages from the distributed list didn't appear on toad.com. As the list faded in popularity, so too did it fade in the number of cross-linked subscription nodes.
To some extent, the cryptography list acts as a successor to cypherpunks; it has many of the people and continues some of the same discussions. However, it is a moderated list, considerably less zany and somewhat more technical. A number of current systems in use trace to the mailing list, including Pretty Good Privacy
, /dev/random
in the Linux kernel
(the actual code has been completely reimplemented several times since then) and today's anonymous remailer
s.
Some are or were quite senior people at major hi-tech companies and others are well-known researchers (see list with affiliations below). However, the "punk" part of the name indicates an attitude:
The first mass media discussion of cypherpunks was in a 1993 Wired
article by Steven Levy
titled "Code Rebels":
The three masked men on the cover of that edition of Wired were prominent cypherpunks Tim May, Eric Hughes and John Gilmore.
Later, Levy wrote a book, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age,
covering the "crypto wars" of the 90s in detail. "Code Rebels" in the title is almost synonymous with "cypherpunks".
The term "cypherpunk" is mildly ambiguous. In most contexts it means anyone advocating cryptography as a tool for social change. However, it can also be used to mean a participant in the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list
described below. The two meanings obviously overlap, but they are by no means synonymous.
Documents exemplifying cypherpunk ideas include Timothy C. May's "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" (1992) and "The Cyphernomicon
" (1994),"A Cypherpunk's Manifesto".
in communications. John Gilmore said:
Such guarantees require strong cryptography, so cypherpunks are fundamentally opposed to government policies attempting to control the usage or export of cryptography. See politics of cryptography for discussion.
This was a central issue for many cypherpunks. Most were passionately opposed to various government attempts to limit cryptography — export laws, promotion of limited key length ciphers, and especially escrowed encryption.
, pseudonym
ity and reputation
were also extensively discussed.
Arguably, the possibility of anonymous speech and publication is vital for an open society, an essential requirement for genuine freedom of speech — this was the position of most cypherpunks. A frequently cited example is that some of the leaders of the American Revolution
published anonymously. On the other hand, the possibility of anonymity may facilitate various forms of criminal activity, notably conspiracy and libel.
On the net, one can use a pseudonym, often shortened to just nym. This has some of the advantages and problems of anonymity, but adds its own complications. A pseudonym can be tied to a public key so that only an authorised person can use it. Several people might share a pseudonym, as for the mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki
who published a number of papers but never actually existed. One person might have multiple pseudonyms. A pseudonym can acquire a reputation — if clever things often appear under the pseudonym, then a new message using that name will be taken seriously. On the other hand, if many messages from a nym are idiotic, a new one may not even be read and will certainly not be accepted without caution.
In particular, the US government's Clipper chip
scheme for escrowed encryption of telephone conversations (encryption secure against most attackers, but breakable at need by government) was seen as anathema by many on the list. This was an issue that provoked strong opposition and brought many new recruits to the cypherpunk ranks. List participant Matt Blaze
found a serious flaw in the scheme, helping to hasten its demise.
) that partitioned and intermixed secret data on a drive with "fake secret data", each of which accessed via a different password. Interrogators, receiving extracting a password, will be led to believe that they have indeed extracted the desired secrets, whereas in reality the actual data is still hidden. In other words, even its presence is hidden. Likewise, Cypherpunks have also discussed under what conditions messages could be encrypted without becoming noticed or flagged as special by network monitoring systems installed by oppressive regimes.
John Gilmore, whose site hosted the original cypherpunks mailing list, wrote:
were almost entirely a cypherpunk development. Among the other projects they have been involved in were PGP
for email privacy, FreeS/WAN for opportunistic encryption
of the whole net, Off-the-record messaging
for privacy in Internet chat, and the Tor
project for anonymous web surfing.
built a $200,000 machine that finds a Data Encryption Standard
key in a few days; details are in Cracking DES. See DES for background.
The project leader was John Gilmore, and the goal of the project was to demonstrate beyond question that DES was insecure. As many cypherpunks saw it, this was necessary because the US government had been telling deliberate lies about the security of DES for some time.
One such paper was Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security. It suggested 75 bits was the minimum key size to allow an existing cipher to be considered secure and kept in service. At the time, the Data Encryption Standard
with 56-bit keys was still a US government standard, mandatory for some applications.
Other papers were critical analysis of government schemes. The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption, evaluated escrowed encryption proposals. Comments on the Carnivore System Technical Review. looked at an FBI scheme for monitoring email.
Cypherpunks provided significant input to the 1996 National Research Council
report on encryption policy,
Cryptography's Role In Securing the Information Society (CRISIS)
This report, commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 1993, was developed via extensive hearings across the nation from all interested stakeholders, by a committee of talented people. It recommended a gradual relaxation of the existing U.S. government restrictions on encryption. Like many such study reports, its conclusions were largely ignored by policy-makers. Later events such as the final rulings in the cypherpunks lawsuits forced a more complete relaxation of the unconstitutional controls on encryption software.
Phil Karn
sued the State Department in 1994 over cryptography export controls after they ruled that, while the book Applied Cryptography could legally be exported, a floppy disk containing a verbatim copy of code printed in the book was legally a munition and required an export permit, which they refused to grant. Karn also appeared before both House and Senate committees looking at cryptography issues.
Daniel Bernstein, supported by the EFF
, also sued over the export restrictions, arguing that preventing publication of cryptographic source code is an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech. He won, effectively overturning the export law. See Bernstein v. United States
for details.
Peter Junger
also sued on similar grounds, and won.
John Gilmore has sued two US Attorneys General (Ashcroft and Gonzales), arguing that the requirement to present identification documents before boarding a plane is unconstitutional. These suits have not been successful to date.
In 1995 Adam Back wrote a version of the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography
in three lines of Perl
and suggested people use it as an email signature file:
Vince Cate put up a web page that invited anyone to become an international arms trafficker; every time someone clicked on the form, an export-restricted item — originally PGP
, later a copy of Back's program — would be mailed from a US server to one in Anguilla. There were options to add your name to a list of such traffickers and to send email to the president registering your protest.
's novel Cryptonomicon
many characters are on the "Secret Admirers" mailing list. This is fairly obviously based on the cypherpunks list, and several well-known cypherpunks are mentioned in the acknowledgements. Much of the plot revolves around cypherpunk ideas; the leading characters are building a data haven which will allow anonymous financial transactions, and the book is full of cryptography.
But, according to the author the book's title is — in spite of its similarity — not based on the Cyphernomicon, an online cypherpunk FAQ document.
There was a pornographic cypherpunk movie called Cryptic Seduction, produced by someone using the pseudonym Randy French. It caused great amusement in cypherpunk circles, with references to and cameos by several prominent cypherpunks, but did not make money. At one point the copyright for it was up for auction.
took the general cypherpunk tendencies toward further in an essay titled "Assassination Politics":
He worked out the mechanisms for this in considerable detail, and speculated extensively on the political consequences. Naturally, the discussion on the list was intense. Later, Bell was arrested and convicted for tax evasion, with accusations of attempts to intimidate IRS agents. Still later, another case was brought against him, alleging "stalking and intimidating local agents of the IRS, Treasury Department and BATF". Another list subscriber, Carl Johnson, was also convicted of sending threatening emails. Discussion of Bell's essay played a prominent part in all three trials.
* indicates someone mentioned in the acknowledgements of Stephenson's Cryptonomicon
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
as a route to social and political change.
Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list
Electronic mailing list
An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...
, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since the late 1980s.
Origins of the term
The term cypherpunk, derived from cipherCipher
In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...
and punk
Punk ideology
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture. In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent...
, was coined by Jude Milhon
Jude Milhon
Jude Milhon , in Anderson, Indiana, best known by her pseudonym St. Jude, was a hacker and author in the San Francisco Bay Area....
as a pun to describe cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
s who used cryptography. In November 2006, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
. The Cypherpunks included several notable computer industry figures, for example Ian Goldberg
Ian Goldberg
Ian Avrum Goldberg is a cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL , and for his role as Chief Scientist of Radialpoint , a Canadian software company...
, Bram Cohen
Bram Cohen
Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent...
and Nikita Borisov
Nikita Borisov
Nikita Borisov is a cryptographer and computer security researcher, currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...
.
Before the mailing list
Until about the 1970s, cryptographyCryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
was mainly done in secret by military or spy agencies. However, in the '70s, there were two publications that brought it out of the closet, into public awareness. One was the US government publication of the Data Encryption Standard
Data Encryption Standard
The Data Encryption Standard is a block cipher that uses shared secret encryption. It was selected by the National Bureau of Standards as an official Federal Information Processing Standard for the United States in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. It is...
(DES), a block cipher
Block cipher
In cryptography, a block cipher is a symmetric key cipher operating on fixed-length groups of bits, called blocks, with an unvarying transformation. A block cipher encryption algorithm might take a 128-bit block of plaintext as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext...
which became very widely used. The other was the publication by Whitfield Diffie
Whitfield Diffie
Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie is an American cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography.Diffie and Martin Hellman's paper New Directions in Cryptography was published in 1976...
and Martin Hellman
Martin Hellman
Martin Edward Hellman is an American cryptologist, and is best known for his invention of public key cryptography in cooperation with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle...
of the first publicly available work on public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private...
.
From that time on, people began to discuss cryptography openly and to examine its political and social consequences. Some of the substantial issues involved in these discussions had to do with the potential uses for and dangers of cryptography. Could it be used by criminals to hide their schemes or their profits, in addition to protecting personal privacy or government and corporate secrets? Should strong cryptography be widely used or strictly limited? Some of the speculations and arguments of these early debates fell along lines now referred to as cypherpunk.
In the late '80s, these ideas coalesced into something like a movement.
Cypherpunk mailing list
Cypherpunks originated as an informal group of people interested in privacyPrivacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
and cryptography
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
who originally communicated through the cypherpunks mailing list
Mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...
, although there were also cypherpunk physical meetings and parties.
The list was started in 1992, peaked around 1997, and has one remaining node as of August 2010: "cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net". At its peak, "cypherpunks" was a very active list with technical discussion ranging over mathematics, cryptography, computer science, political and philosophical discussion, personal arguments and attacks, etc., with some spam thrown in. An email from John Gilmore shows an average of 30 messages a day from December 1, 1996 to March 1, 1999, and suggests that the number was probably higher earlier. There were well over a thousand subscribers at the peak.
For a time, the cypherpunks mailing list was a popular tool with mailbombers, who would subscribe a victim to the mailing list in order to cause a deluge of messages to be sent to him or her. (This was usually done as a prank, in contrast to the style of terrorist referred to as a mailbomber.) This precipitated the mailing list sysop(s) to institute a reply-to-subscribe system. Approximately two hundred messages a day was typical for the mailing list, divided between personal arguments and attacks, political discussion, technical discussion, and early spam.
The cypherpunks mailing list had extensive discussions of the public policy issues related to cryptography and on the politics and philosophy of concepts such as anonymity, pseudonyms, reputation, and privacy. These discussions continue both on the remaining node and elsewhere as the list has become increasingly moribund.
Events such as the GURPS Cyberpunk
GURPS Cyberpunk
GURPS Cyberpunk is a genre toolkit for cyberpunk-themed role-playing games set in a near-future dystopia, such as that envisioned by William Gibson in his influential novel Neuromancer...
raid lent weight to the idea that private individuals needed to take steps to protect their privacy. In its heyday, the list discussed public policy issues related to cryptography, as well as more practical nuts-and-bolts mathematical, computational, technological, and cryptographic matters. The list had a range of viewpoints and there was probably no completely unanimous agreement on anything. The general attitude, though, definitely put personal privacy and personal liberty above all other considerations.
Early discussion of online privacy
In at least two senses, people on the list were ahead of more-or-less everyone else. For one thing, the list was discussing questions about privacy, government monitoring, corporate control of information, and related issues in the early 90s that did not become major topics for broader discussion until ten years or so later. For another, at least some list participants were more radical on these issues than almost anyone else.Those wishing to understand the context of the list might refer to the history of cryptography; in the early 90s, the US government considered crypto software a "munition" for export purposes, which hampered commercial deployment with no gain in "national security", as knowledge and skill was not limited to US citizens. (PGP source code was published as a paper book to bypass these regulations and demonstrate their futility.) The US government had tried to subvert cryptography (e.g. by requiring SkipJack and key-escrow). It was also not widely known among that all communications were logged by government agencies (which would later be revealed during the NSA
NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy concerns surveillance of persons within the United States during the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency as part of the war on terror...
and AT&T scandals
Hepting v. AT&T
Hepting v. AT&T is a United States class action lawsuit filed in January 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the telecommunications company AT&T, in which the EFF alleges that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency in unlawfully monitoring the communications of...
) though this was taken as an obvious axiom by listmembers.
The original cypherpunk mailing list, and the first list spin-off, "coderpunks", were originally hosted on John Gilmore's toad.com, but after a falling out with the sysop
SysOp
A sysop is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system or an online service virtual community. It may also be used to refer to administrators of other Internet-based network services....
over moderation, the list was migrated to several cross-linked mail-servers in what was called the "distributed mailing list". The coderpunks list, open by invitation only, existed for a time. Coderpunks took up more technical matters and had less discussion of public policy implications. There are several lists today that can trace their lineage directly to the original Cypherpunks list: the "Cryptography" list (cryptography@metzdowd.com), the "Financial Cryptography" list (fc-announce@ifca.ai), and a small group of closed (invitation-only) lists as well.
Toad.com continued to run with the existing subscriber list, those that didn't unsubscribe, and was mirrored on the new distributed mailing list, but messages from the distributed list didn't appear on toad.com. As the list faded in popularity, so too did it fade in the number of cross-linked subscription nodes.
To some extent, the cryptography list acts as a successor to cypherpunks; it has many of the people and continues some of the same discussions. However, it is a moderated list, considerably less zany and somewhat more technical. A number of current systems in use trace to the mailing list, including Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...
, /dev/random
/dev/random
In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/random is a special file that serves as a random number generator or as a pseudorandom number generator. It allows access to environmental noise collected from device drivers and other sources. Not all operating systems implement the same semantics for /dev/random...
in the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
(the actual code has been completely reimplemented several times since then) and today's anonymous remailer
Anonymous remailer
An anonymous remailer is a server computer which receives messages with embedded instructions on where to send them next, and which forwards them without revealing where they originally came from...
s.
Main principles
The basic ideas are in this quote from "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" (Eric Hughes, 1993):Some are or were quite senior people at major hi-tech companies and others are well-known researchers (see list with affiliations below). However, the "punk" part of the name indicates an attitude:
The first mass media discussion of cypherpunks was in a 1993 Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
article by Steven Levy
Steven Levy
Steven Levy is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.-Career:...
titled "Code Rebels":
The three masked men on the cover of that edition of Wired were prominent cypherpunks Tim May, Eric Hughes and John Gilmore.
Later, Levy wrote a book, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age,
covering the "crypto wars" of the 90s in detail. "Code Rebels" in the title is almost synonymous with "cypherpunks".
The term "cypherpunk" is mildly ambiguous. In most contexts it means anyone advocating cryptography as a tool for social change. However, it can also be used to mean a participant in the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list
Electronic mailing list
An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...
described below. The two meanings obviously overlap, but they are by no means synonymous.
Documents exemplifying cypherpunk ideas include Timothy C. May's "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" (1992) and "The Cyphernomicon
Cyphernomicon
"The Cyphernomicon" is a document written by Timothy C. May in 1994 for the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, outlining some ideas behind, and the effects of, crypto-anarchism...
" (1994),"A Cypherpunk's Manifesto".
Privacy of communications
A very basic cypherpunk issue is privacyPrivacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
in communications. John Gilmore said:
Such guarantees require strong cryptography, so cypherpunks are fundamentally opposed to government policies attempting to control the usage or export of cryptography. See politics of cryptography for discussion.
This was a central issue for many cypherpunks. Most were passionately opposed to various government attempts to limit cryptography — export laws, promotion of limited key length ciphers, and especially escrowed encryption.
Anonymity and pseudonyms
The questions of anonymityAnonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
, pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
ity and reputation
Reputation
Reputation of a social entity is an opinion about that entity, typically a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria...
were also extensively discussed.
Arguably, the possibility of anonymous speech and publication is vital for an open society, an essential requirement for genuine freedom of speech — this was the position of most cypherpunks. A frequently cited example is that some of the leaders of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
published anonymously. On the other hand, the possibility of anonymity may facilitate various forms of criminal activity, notably conspiracy and libel.
On the net, one can use a pseudonym, often shortened to just nym. This has some of the advantages and problems of anonymity, but adds its own complications. A pseudonym can be tied to a public key so that only an authorised person can use it. Several people might share a pseudonym, as for the mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki
Nicolas Bourbaki
Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of 20th-century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics, beginning in 1935. With the goal of founding all of mathematics on set theory, the group strove for rigour and generality...
who published a number of papers but never actually existed. One person might have multiple pseudonyms. A pseudonym can acquire a reputation — if clever things often appear under the pseudonym, then a new message using that name will be taken seriously. On the other hand, if many messages from a nym are idiotic, a new one may not even be read and will certainly not be accepted without caution.
Censorship and monitoring
Questions of censorship and government or police monitoring of various things were also much discussed. Generally, cypherpunks opposed both.In particular, the US government's Clipper chip
Clipper chip
The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the U.S. National Security Agency as an encryption device to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission...
scheme for escrowed encryption of telephone conversations (encryption secure against most attackers, but breakable at need by government) was seen as anathema by many on the list. This was an issue that provoked strong opposition and brought many new recruits to the cypherpunk ranks. List participant Matt Blaze
Matt Blaze
Matt Blaze is a researcher in the areas of secure systems, cryptography, and trust management. He is currently an Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania; he received his PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University.In 1992, while working for...
found a serious flaw in the scheme, helping to hasten its demise.
Hiding the act of hiding
Another important set of discussions continues to be the use of crypto itself as a flag to oppressive authorities. As a result, Cypherpunks have discussed (and even developed) several approaches to crypto that hide even the use of crypto itself or that allow interrogators to believe that they have forcibly extracted hidden information from an interogee. For instance, "Rubberhose" was a tool (developed by Julian AssangeJulian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
) that partitioned and intermixed secret data on a drive with "fake secret data", each of which accessed via a different password. Interrogators, receiving extracting a password, will be led to believe that they have indeed extracted the desired secrets, whereas in reality the actual data is still hidden. In other words, even its presence is hidden. Likewise, Cypherpunks have also discussed under what conditions messages could be encrypted without becoming noticed or flagged as special by network monitoring systems installed by oppressive regimes.
Activities
As the Manifesto says "Cypherpunks write code"; the notion that good ideas need to be implemented, not just discussed, is very much part of the culture.John Gilmore, whose site hosted the original cypherpunks mailing list, wrote:
Software projects
Anonymous remailers such as the Mixmaster RemailerMixmaster anonymous remailer
Mixmaster is a Type II anonymous remailer which sends messages in fixed-size packets and reorders them, preventing anyone watching the messages go in and out of remailers from tracing them. Mixmaster was originally written by Lance Cottrell, and was maintained by Len Sassaman Peter Palfrader is the...
were almost entirely a cypherpunk development. Among the other projects they have been involved in were PGP
Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...
for email privacy, FreeS/WAN for opportunistic encryption
Opportunistic encryption
Opportunistic Encryption refers to any system that, when connecting to another system, attempts to encrypt the communications channel otherwise falling back to unencrypted communications. This method requires no pre-arrangement between the two systems.Opportunistic encryption can be used to...
of the whole net, Off-the-record messaging
Off-the-record messaging
Off-the-Record Messaging, commonly referred to as OTR, is a cryptographic protocol that provides strong encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of the AES symmetric-key algorithm, the Diffie–Hellman key exchange, and the SHA-1 hash function...
for privacy in Internet chat, and the Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
project for anonymous web surfing.
Hardware
In 1998, the Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
built a $200,000 machine that finds a Data Encryption Standard
Data Encryption Standard
The Data Encryption Standard is a block cipher that uses shared secret encryption. It was selected by the National Bureau of Standards as an official Federal Information Processing Standard for the United States in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. It is...
key in a few days; details are in Cracking DES. See DES for background.
The project leader was John Gilmore, and the goal of the project was to demonstrate beyond question that DES was insecure. As many cypherpunks saw it, this was necessary because the US government had been telling deliberate lies about the security of DES for some time.
Expert panels
Cypherpunks also participated, along with other experts, in several reports on cryptographic matters.One such paper was Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security. It suggested 75 bits was the minimum key size to allow an existing cipher to be considered secure and kept in service. At the time, the Data Encryption Standard
Data Encryption Standard
The Data Encryption Standard is a block cipher that uses shared secret encryption. It was selected by the National Bureau of Standards as an official Federal Information Processing Standard for the United States in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. It is...
with 56-bit keys was still a US government standard, mandatory for some applications.
Other papers were critical analysis of government schemes. The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption, evaluated escrowed encryption proposals. Comments on the Carnivore System Technical Review. looked at an FBI scheme for monitoring email.
Cypherpunks provided significant input to the 1996 National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
report on encryption policy,
Cryptography's Role In Securing the Information Society (CRISIS)
This report, commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 1993, was developed via extensive hearings across the nation from all interested stakeholders, by a committee of talented people. It recommended a gradual relaxation of the existing U.S. government restrictions on encryption. Like many such study reports, its conclusions were largely ignored by policy-makers. Later events such as the final rulings in the cypherpunks lawsuits forced a more complete relaxation of the unconstitutional controls on encryption software.
Lawsuits
Cypherpunks have filed a number of lawsuits, mostly suits against the US government alleging that some government action is unconstitutional.Phil Karn
Phil Karn
Phil Karn is an engineer from Baltimore, Maryland. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1978 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979. From 1979 until 1984, Phil Karn worked at Bell Labs in Naperville,...
sued the State Department in 1994 over cryptography export controls after they ruled that, while the book Applied Cryptography could legally be exported, a floppy disk containing a verbatim copy of code printed in the book was legally a munition and required an export permit, which they refused to grant. Karn also appeared before both House and Senate committees looking at cryptography issues.
Daniel Bernstein, supported by the EFF
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
, also sued over the export restrictions, arguing that preventing publication of cryptographic source code is an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech. He won, effectively overturning the export law. See Bernstein v. United States
Bernstein v. United States
Bernstein v. United States is a set of court cases brought by Daniel J. Bernstein challenging restrictions on the export of cryptography from the United States....
for details.
Peter Junger
Peter Junger
Peter D. Junger was a computer law professor and Internet activist, most famous for having fought against the U.S. government's regulations of and export controls on encryption software....
also sued on similar grounds, and won.
John Gilmore has sued two US Attorneys General (Ashcroft and Gonzales), arguing that the requirement to present identification documents before boarding a plane is unconstitutional. These suits have not been successful to date.
Civil disobedience
Cypherpunks encouraged civil disobedience, in particular US law on the export of cryptography. Until 1996, cryptographic code was legally a munition, and until 2000 export required a permit.In 1995 Adam Back wrote a version of the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private...
in three lines of Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
and suggested people use it as an email signature file:
#!/bin/perl -sp0777i
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
Vince Cate put up a web page that invited anyone to become an international arms trafficker; every time someone clicked on the form, an export-restricted item — originally PGP
Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...
, later a copy of Back's program — would be mailed from a US server to one in Anguilla. There were options to add your name to a list of such traffickers and to send email to the president registering your protest.
Cypherpunk fiction
In Neal StephensonNeal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...
's novel Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson. The novel follows the exploits of two groups of people in two different time periods, presented in alternating chapters...
many characters are on the "Secret Admirers" mailing list. This is fairly obviously based on the cypherpunks list, and several well-known cypherpunks are mentioned in the acknowledgements. Much of the plot revolves around cypherpunk ideas; the leading characters are building a data haven which will allow anonymous financial transactions, and the book is full of cryptography.
But, according to the author the book's title is — in spite of its similarity — not based on the Cyphernomicon, an online cypherpunk FAQ document.
There was a pornographic cypherpunk movie called Cryptic Seduction, produced by someone using the pseudonym Randy French. It caused great amusement in cypherpunk circles, with references to and cameos by several prominent cypherpunks, but did not make money. At one point the copyright for it was up for auction.
Jim Bell and "Assassination Politics"
Jim BellJim Bell
James Dalton Bell is an American crypto-anarchist who created the idea of arranging for anonymously-sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called "assassination politics". Since the publication of the "Assassination Politics" essay, Bell was targeted by the federal government...
took the general cypherpunk tendencies toward further in an essay titled "Assassination Politics":
He worked out the mechanisms for this in considerable detail, and speculated extensively on the political consequences. Naturally, the discussion on the list was intense. Later, Bell was arrested and convicted for tax evasion, with accusations of attempts to intimidate IRS agents. Still later, another case was brought against him, alleging "stalking and intimidating local agents of the IRS, Treasury Department and BATF". Another list subscriber, Carl Johnson, was also convicted of sending threatening emails. Discussion of Bell's essay played a prominent part in all three trials.
Noteworthy cypherpunks
Cypherpunks list participants included many notable computer industry figures. Most were list regulars, although not all would call themselves "cypherpunks"http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/09/55114.- Julian AssangeJulian AssangeJulian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
: — WikiLeaksWikileaksWikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
founder, deniable cryptography inventor, journalist, co-author of Underground - Adam BackAdam BackAdam Back is a British cryptographer and crypto-hacker.He is the inventor of hashcash, a proof-of-work system for protecting against email spam and other denial-of-service attacks. He wrote credlib...
: — inventor of HashcashHashcashHashcash is a proof-of-work system designed to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks. It was proposed in March 1997 by Adam Back.-How it works:...
also the inventor of NNTP based Eternity networks] - Jim BellJim BellJames Dalton Bell is an American crypto-anarchist who created the idea of arranging for anonymously-sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called "assassination politics". Since the publication of the "Assassination Politics" essay, Bell was targeted by the federal government...
: — author of the Assassination Politics paper - Steven Bellovin: — Bell Labs researcher, later Columbia professor
- Matt BlazeMatt BlazeMatt Blaze is a researcher in the areas of secure systems, cryptography, and trust management. He is currently an Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania; he received his PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University.In 1992, while working for...
: — Bell Labs researcher, later professor at University of Pennsylvania - Eric BlossomEric BlossomEric Blossom is the founder and overall architect of the GNU Radio project. GNU Radio is a free software toolkit for building real-time signal processing systems...
: — designer of the Starium cryptographically-secured mobile phone, founder of the GNU RadioGNU RadioGNU Radio is a free software toolkit for learning about, building, and deploying software-defined radio systems. GNU Radio is released under the GPL version 3 license....
project. - Jon CallasJon CallasJon Callas is an American computer security expert and Chief Technical Officer of Entrust. Callas has a long history of work in the computer security field, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Additionally, Callas is a contributor to multiple IETF RFCs...
: — technical lead on OpenPGP specification and Chief Technical Officer of PGP Corporation - Bram CohenBram CohenBram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent...
: — creator of BitTorrent - Lance CottrellLance CottrellLance Cottrell develops Internet privacy systems. Cottrell launched the first commercial privacy service, Anonymizer.com, in 1995 while studying towards a PhD in Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego. Cottrell was the original coder for the Mixmaster anonymous remailer and...
: — the original author of the Mixmaster RemailerMixmaster anonymous remailerMixmaster is a Type II anonymous remailer which sends messages in fixed-size packets and reorders them, preventing anyone watching the messages go in and out of remailers from tracing them. Mixmaster was originally written by Lance Cottrell, and was maintained by Len Sassaman Peter Palfrader is the...
software, and founder of Anonymizer Inc.Anonymizer (company)Anonymizer, Inc. is an Internet privacy company, founded in 1995 by Lance Cottrell, author of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer. Anonymizer was originally named Infonex Internet. The name was changed to Anonymizer in 1997 when the company acquired a web based privacy proxy of the same name developed... - Kent Crispin: — researcher at Lawrence Livermore labs, later at ICANN
- Matt CurtinMatt CurtinMatt Curtin is a computer scientist and entrepreneur in Columbus, Ohio best known for his work in cryptography and firewall systems. He is the founder of Interhack Corporation, first faculty advisor of , and lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State...
: — founder of Interhack Corporation, first faculty advisor of The Ohio State University Open Source Club, and lecturer at The Ohio State UniversityOhio State UniversityThe Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
. - Hugh Daniel: — former Sun Microsystems' employee, manager of the FreeS/WAN project (an early and important freeware IPsecIPsecInternet Protocol Security is a protocol suite for securing Internet Protocol communications by authenticating and encrypting each IP packet of a communication session...
implementation) - Dave Del Torto: PGPv3 volunteer, founding PGP Inc employee, longtime Cypherpunks physical meeting organizer, co-author of RFC3156 (PGP/MIME) standard, co-founder of IETF OpenPGP Working Group and the CryptoRights FoundationCryptoRights FoundationThe CryptoRights Foundation, Inc. is a 501 non-profit organization based in San Francisco and established in 1998, notable for the development of HighFire and work on other encryption standards, such as PGP and IPsec...
human rights non-profit, HighFire project principal architect - Tyler Durden — "Tyler Durden" is a pseudonym. Tyler Durden was apparently a fibre optic engineer at Bell Communications Research and later worked in the financial industry.
- Hal FinneyHal Finney (cypherpunk)Hal Finney is a developer for PGP Corporation, and was the 2nd developer hired after Phil Zimmerman. In his early career, he is credited as lead developer on several console games...
— Cryptographer, main author of PGP 2.0 and the core crypto libraries of later versions of PGP; designer of RPOWProof-of-work systemA proof-of-work system is an economic measure to deter denial of service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from the service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer... - Randy French — "Randy French" is a pseudonym. French was the producer of the first Cypherpunk genre pornographic film, Cryptic Seduction
- John Gilmore: — Sun Microsystems' fifth employee, one of the founders of the Cypherpunks as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, project leader for FreeS/WAN *
- Mike GodwinMike GodwinMichael Wayne Godwin is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , and the creator of the Internet adage Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation...
: — Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer - Ian GoldbergIan GoldbergIan Avrum Goldberg is a cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL , and for his role as Chief Scientist of Radialpoint , a Canadian software company...
: — professor at University of Waterloo, designer of the Off-the-record messaging protocol* - Rop GonggrijpRop GonggrijpRobbert Valentijn Gonggrijp is a Dutch hacker and one of the founders of XS4ALL.- Biography :While growing up in Wormer in the Dutch Zaanstreek area, he became known as a teenage hacker and appeared as one of the main characters in Jan Jacobs's book "Kraken en Computers" which...
: — founder of XS4ALL, co-creator of the Cryptophone - Gwen Hastings: — Pseudonym for one of the original cypherpunks. (Still active)
- Lucky Green — "Lucky Green" is a pseudonym. Lucky was the author of the first free software implementation of ring signatures
- Peter GutmannPeter Gutmann (computer scientist)Peter Gutmann is a computer scientist in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Auckland. His Ph.D. thesis and a book based on the thesis were about a cryptographic security architecture...
: — researcher at University of Auckland, New Zealand - Sean HastingsSean HastingsSean Hastings is an entrepreneur, cypherpunk author, and security expert. He is best known for being the founding CEO of HavenCo, the world's first formal data haven.- Work :In 1997, Hastings worked on cryptographic protocols and tools free of U.S...
: — founding CEO of HavencoHavenCoHavenCo Limited was a data haven, data hosting services company, founded in 2000 which operated from Sealand, self-declared 'sovereign principality' that occupies a man-made former World War II defensive facility originally known as Roughs Tower located approximately six miles from the coast of...
and co-author of the book God Wants You Dead - Marc HorowitzMarc HorowitzMarc Horowitz is an artist, actor, writer, filmmaker, comic, and internet celebrity based in Los Angeles, California....
: — author of the first PGP key serverKey server (cryptographic)In computer security, a key server is a computer that receives and then serves existing cryptographic keys to users or other programs. The users' programs can be working on the same network as the key server or on another networked computer.... - Tim HudsonTim HudsonTimothy Adam Hudson is a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball who plays for the Atlanta Braves. Hudson began his major league career with the Oakland Athletics and played his last two years of college eligibility at Auburn University...
: — Co-author of SSLeay, the precursor to OpenSSLOpenSSLOpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptographic functions and provides various utility functions... - Eric Hughes: — Founding member of Cypherpunks, author of A Cypherpunk's Manifesto[11]*
- Peter JungerPeter JungerPeter D. Junger was a computer law professor and Internet activist, most famous for having fought against the U.S. government's regulations of and export controls on encryption software....
: — Law professor at Case Western Reserve University - Phil KarnPhil KarnPhil Karn is an engineer from Baltimore, Maryland. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1978 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979. From 1979 until 1984, Phil Karn worked at Bell Labs in Naperville,...
: — Bell Labs researcher, later at Qualcomm - Paul KocherPaul KocherPaul Carl Kocher is an American cryptographer and cryptography consultant, currently the president and chief scientist of Cryptography Research, Inc....
: — president of Cryptography Research, Inc., co-author of the SSL 3.0 protocol - Ryan LackeyRyan LackeyRyan Donald Lackey is an entrepreneur and computer security professional. He was a co-founder of HavenCo, the world's first data haven...
: — Co-founder of HavenCoHavenCoHavenCo Limited was a data haven, data hosting services company, founded in 2000 which operated from Sealand, self-declared 'sovereign principality' that occupies a man-made former World War II defensive facility originally known as Roughs Tower located approximately six miles from the coast of...
, the world's first data havenData havenA data haven, like a corporate haven or tax haven, is a refuge for uninterrupted or unregulated data. Data havens are locations with legal environments that are friendly to the concept of a computer network freely holding data and even protecting its content and associated information... - Brian LaMacchiaBrian LaMacchiaBrian A. LaMacchia is a computer security specialist.LaMacchia is best known for his work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology establishing the MIT PGP Key Server, the first key centric PKI implementation to see widescale use....
: — designer of XKMSXKMSXML Key Management Specification uses the web services framework to make it easier for developers to secure inter-application communication using public key infrastructure . XML Key Management Specification is a protocol developed by W3C which describes the distribution and registration of public... - Adam Langley: — GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
software security engineer, author of several IETF RFCRequest for CommentsIn computer network engineering, a Request for Comments is a memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.Through the Internet Society, engineers and...
s aiming to improve TLSTransport Layer SecurityTransport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet... - Ben LaurieBen LaurieBen Laurie is a software engineer, protocol designer and cryptographer. He is a founding director of The Apache Software Foundation, a core team member of OpenSSL, a member of the Shmoo Group, a director of the Open Rights Group, Director of Security at The Bunker Secure Hosting, Trustee and...
: — founder of The BunkerThe BunkerThe Bunker is an account, written by American journalist James P. O'Donnell, of the history of the Führerbunker in early 1945, as well as the last days of German dictator Adolf Hitler...
, core OpenSSLOpenSSLOpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptographic functions and provides various utility functions...
team member, GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
engineer - Moxie MarlinspikeMoxie MarlinspikeMoxie Marlinspike is a computer security researcher. He has discovered several high-profile computer-related security problems, is well known for work with both secure protocols and Android, and is the author of the sailing film Hold Fast....
: — co-founder of Whisper Systems. - Timothy C. MayTimothy C. MayTimothy C. May, better known as Tim May, is a technical and political writer, and was an electronic engineer and senior scientist at Intel in the company's early history...
: — former Chief Scientist at Intel, author of A Crypto Anarchist Manifesto[12] and the Cyphernomicom[13], and a Founding member of the Cypherpunks - Jim McCoy: — creator of MojoNation.
- David Molnar: — co-creator of the Freehaven project (a precursor to TorTor (anonymity network)Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
), and currently a researcher at MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions... - Declan McCullaghDeclan McCullaghDeclan McCullagh is an American journalist and columnist for CBSNews.com. He specializes in computer security and privacy issues. He is notable, among other things, for his early involvement with the media interpretation of U.S...
: — journalist specializing in security and privacy issues - Jude MilhonJude MilhonJude Milhon , in Anderson, Indiana, best known by her pseudonym St. Jude, was a hacker and author in the San Francisco Bay Area....
: — (a.k.a "St. Jude") a Founding Member of the Cypherpunks and credited with naming the group and co-creator of Mondo 2000Mondo 2000Mondo 2000 was a glossy cyberculture magazine published in California during the 1980s and 1990s. It covered cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs. It was a more anarchic and subversive prototype for the later-founded Wired magazine....
magazine(Deceased) - Satoshi Nakamoto:— creator of BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network over which users make transactions that are tracked and verified through this network. The word Bitcoin also refers to the digital currency implemented as the currency medium for user transactions over this network...
, possibly a pseudonym - Sameer ParekhSameer ParekhSameer Parekh is best known for being the founder of C2Net Software, Inc.While in high school in Libertyville, Illinois, he published an underground newspaper called The Free Journal, promoting free speech and other libertarian ideas....
: — former CEO of C2NetC2NetC2Net was an Internet cryptography company founded by Sameer Parekh, which was sold to Red Hat in 2000. It was best known for its Stronghold secure webserver software....
and co-founder of the CryptoRights FoundationCryptoRights FoundationThe CryptoRights Foundation, Inc. is a 501 non-profit organization based in San Francisco and established in 1998, notable for the development of HighFire and work on other encryption standards, such as PGP and IPsec...
human rights non-profit - Vipul Ved PrakashVipul Ved PrakashVipul Ved Prakash is a software engineer and entrepreneur, most widely known for creating Vipul's Razor, a collaborative anti-spam system. In 2001, Vipul co-founded Cloudmark, a company that...
: — co-founder of Sense/Net, author of Vipul's RazorVipul's RazorVipul's Razor is a checksum-based, distributed, collaborative, spam-detection-and-filtering network. Through user contribution, Razor establishes a distributed and constantly updating catalogue of spam in propagation that is consulted by email clients to filter out known spam. Detection is done...
, founder of CloudmarkCloudmarkCloudmark, Inc is a privately held company, San Francisco-based, providing protection against spam, viruses, phishing, and similar threats that affect email.... - Len SassamanLen SassamanLen Sassaman was an advocate for privacy, maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and remop of the randseed remailer.He was employed as the security architect and senior systems engineer for Anonymizer...
: — maintainer of the Mixmaster RemailerMixmaster anonymous remailerMixmaster is a Type II anonymous remailer which sends messages in fixed-size packets and reorders them, preventing anyone watching the messages go in and out of remailers from tracing them. Mixmaster was originally written by Lance Cottrell, and was maintained by Len Sassaman Peter Palfrader is the...
software, researcher at Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenKatholieke Universiteit LeuvenThe Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is a Dutch-speaking university in Flanders, Belgium.It is located at the centre of the historic town of Leuven, and is a prominent part of the city, home to the university since 1425...
, and a biopunkBiopunkBiopunk is a term used to describe:# A hobbyist who experiments with DNA and other aspects of genetics.# A technoprogressive movement advocating open access to genetic information....
(deceased). - Bill Scannell: — former US military intelligence officer, public relations campaign manager involved with pro-liberty causes such as the Hiibel and Elcomsoft cases.
- Bruce SchneierBruce SchneierBruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of BT Managed Security Solutions, formerly Counterpane Internet...
: — well-known security author, founder of Counterpane* - Peter Shipley: — inventor of war-driving
- Bill Stewart: — organizer of Cypherpunks physical meetings, researcher at AT&T Labs.
- William Allen Simpson: — designer, with Karn, of the Photuris protocol, an alternative to Internet Key ExchangeInternet key exchangeInternet Key Exchange is the protocol used to set up a security association in the IPsec protocol suite. IKE builds upon the Oakley protocol and ISAKMP...
- Alif Terranson: — the "Savvis Whistleblower" (see SavvisSAVVISSavvis – A CenturyLink Company is a subsidiary of CenturyLink, a company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana. Savvis provides information technology solutions for enterprises and government agencies...
), and the current listowner of the spam-l and GasNet Anesthesia Mailing Lists - Fellow Traveler: — author of the "Open-Transactions" untraceable digital cash system
- Major Variola (Ret): — Major Variola (Ret) is a Nym. Variola was active in Cypherpunks from 1999 to 2006.
- John Young: — started the Cryptome web site
- Peter WaynerPeter WaynerPeter Wayner is a writer known for his books on technology and his writing for publications like The New York Times, InfoWorld, and Wired magazine. His work on mimic functions, a camouflaging technique for encoding data so it takes on the statistical characteristics of other information, is an...
: — author of book Translucent Databases - Barry Wels: — discoverer of lock bumpingLock bumpingLock bumping is a lock picking technique for opening a pin tumbler lock using a specially crafted bump key. One bump key will work for all locks of the same type.-History:A US patent first appears in 1928 by H.R. Simpson called a "rapping" or bump-key...
, co-creator of the Cryptophone - Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn: — DigiCashDigiCashDigiCash Inc. was a pioneering electronic currency corporation founded by David Chaum in 1990. DigiCash transactions were unique in that they were anonymous due to a number of cryptographic protocols developed by its founder...
and MojoNation developer, co-designer of Tahoe-LAFS. - Eric A. Young: — co-author of SSLeay, the precursor to OpenSSLOpenSSLOpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptographic functions and provides various utility functions...
- Philip Zimmermann: — original creator of PGP v1.0 (1991), co-founder of PGP Inc (1996)
- Kelly Goen: — original publisher/SQA for PGP v1.0 (1991)
External links
- The official Cypherpunks website
- A Cypherpunk's Manifesto written by Eric Hughes
- The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto written by Timothy C. MayTimothy C. MayTimothy C. May, better known as Tim May, is a technical and political writer, and was an electronic engineer and senior scientist at Intel in the company's early history...
- The Cyphernomicon by Timothy C. MayTimothy C. MayTimothy C. May, better known as Tim May, is a technical and political writer, and was an electronic engineer and senior scientist at Intel in the company's early history...
("Cypherpunks FAQ and More" from 1994) - Archives of the first eight years of the mailing list (Zipped, 83MB)
- "Warm Party for a Code Group" - Cypherpunks 10 year anniversary (article in Wired)
- Crypto Rebels, Wired Magazine issue 1.02 (May/Jun 1993)