CryptoParty

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Sample flyer. The electromechanical computer in the background is the US NAVY bomb that helped during the Second World War, the Enigma to analyze .

A CryptoParty (also cryptoparty ) is a meeting of people with the aim of teaching each other basic encryption and obfuscation techniques (for example Tor , VPN , OpenPGP , hard disk encryption and OTR ). CryptoPartys are public and non-commercial, with a focus on open source software .

Emergence

The forerunner of the CryptoParty is the key signing party . This came about to promote the spread of PGP and to build a web of trust by signing PGP keys . As the successor to the Cypherpunks , the concept was invented in late August 2012 in a casual Twitter conversation between an Australian data protection activist ( pseudonym Asher Wolf) and computer security experts after the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 was passed by the Australian Parliament and the proposal for a two-year period Data Retention Act was made.

The DIY movement went viral instantly, with a dozen independently organized CryptoParties in Australia, Germany, the US, and the UK. Soon many more were being held in Chile, the Netherlands, Hawaii, Asia, etc. The use of Tor in Australia increased significantly and permanently and the CryptoParty in London with 130 people had to be relocated from the London Hackspace to the Google Campus. More than 100 CryptoParties, some of them regularly, had been held worldwide by mid-2013.

reception

CryptoParty soon received letters of support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation , (at least parts of) AnonyOps , NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake , Wikileaks editor-in-chief Heather Marsh and Wired reporter Quinn Norton. Eric Hughes , who wrote A Cypherpunk's Manifesto in 1993, gave the opening speech Putting the Personal Back in Personal Computers at the Amsterdam CryptoParty on September 27, 2012. Marcin de Kaminski , founding member of Piratbyrån and the hacker collective Telecomix , thinks CryptoParty is the “ most important civil society project ”today, and Cory Doctorow characterized a CryptoParty as“ a Tupperware party for learning cryptography ”.

CryptoParty Handbook

The first draft of the 442-page CryptoParty Handbook (available in bound form) was written in just three days using the Book Sprint process and published on October 4, 2012 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. It is constantly being improved.

Current initiatives

Cryptoparty.in lists the CryptoPartys that take place worldwide. For the German-speaking area there are initiatives in around 30 major German cities, but also in Graz , Innsbruck and Vienna as well as various Swiss cities. Austria also has its own platform, cryptoparty.at.

Spam attacks and decommissioning

In April and May 2013, the movement's main wiki site, cryptoparty.org, was hit by a series of spam attacks. This meant that the site was taken out of service by the administrator at the time. The website is now available at cryptoparty.in.

Involvement of Edward Snowden

In May 2014, Wired magazine reported that Edward Snowden had organized a local CryptoParty in a small hackerspace in Honolulu , Hawaii . The CryptoParty took place on December 11th, 2012, 6 months before he became known internationally through the leaked documents in the course of the global surveillance and espionage affair and when he was still working as an employee of the NSA at Dell . At the CryptoParty, he taught 20 people how to encrypt their hard drives and use the Internet anonymously. The event was filmed by Snowden's friend Lindsay Mills, but the video footage was never posted online. In a subsequent post on the CryptoParty Wiki, Snowden described the event as a "great success".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cryptoparty.in (English)
  2. ↑ Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 (English)
  3. ↑ Australia: Senate passes cybercrime law
  4. ↑ Government demands data retention
  5. ↑ Ain't no party like a cryptoparty: privacy goes viral (video, English)
  6. ↑ Cryptoparty goes viral (English)
  7. ↑ Tor Metrics Portal: Users  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / metrics.torproject.org  
  8. ↑ A new generation of CypherPunks? CryptoParty London Sat 29 Sept @ Google Campus (English)
  9. ↑ Message from AnonyOps . In: YouTube . 23rd September 2012.
  10. ↑ Eric Hughes: A Cypherpunk's Manifesto . March 9, 1993.
  11. ↑ On 2012-09-27 Eric Hughes delivered the Eric Hughes delivered the keynote address, Putting the Personal Back in Personal Computers, at the Amsterdam CryptoParty In: SoundCloud . January 15, 2013.
  12. ↑ Ole Reißmann: Crypto Party movement: encrypt, obfuscate, hide . In: Spiegel Online . October 9, 2012.
  13. ↑ Cory Doctorow: CryptoParty: like a Tupperware party for learning crypto . In: Boing Boing . October 12, 2012.
  14. ↑ CryptoParty Handbook - be vigilant!
  15. ↑ location - CryptoParty. . cryptoparty.in. Archived from the original on August 12, 2013. Retrieved August 11, 2013.
  16. ↑ start - CryptoParty Austria . cryptoparty.at. Archived from the original on August 12, 2013. Retrieved August 11, 2013.
  17. ↑ Snowden's post on the CryptoParty Wiki .
  18. ↑ Kevin Poulsen: Snowden's First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii . Wired .
  19. ↑ Jonas Rest: Learning to encrypt with Edward Snowden . Berlin newspaper .
  20. ↑ With crypto parties against the NSA . cio.de.