The CryptoParty Handbook

This 392 page, Creative Commons licensed handbook is designed to help those with no prior experience to protect their basic human right to Privacy in networked, digital domains. By covering a broad array of topics and use contexts it is written to help anyone wishing to understand and then quickly mitigate many kinds of vulnerability using free, open-source tools. Most importantly however this handbook is intended as a reference for use during Crypto Parties.

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About this book

The CryptoParty Handbook was born from a suggestion by Marta Peirano and Adam Hyde after the first Berlin CryptoParty, held on the 29th of August, 2012. Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, co-organisers of the Berlin CryptoParty (along with Marta) were very enthusiastic about the idea, seeing a need for a practical working book with a low entry-barrier to use in subsequent parties. Asher Wolf, originator of the CryptoParty movement, was then invited to join in and the project was born.

This book was written in the first 3 days of October 2012 at Studio Weise7, Berlin, surrounded by fine food and a lake of coffee amidst a veritable snake pit of cables. Approximately 20 people were involved in its creation, some more than others, some local and some far (Melbourne in particular).

The facilitated writing methodology used, Book Sprint, is all about minimising any obstruction between expertise and the published page. Face-to-face discussion and dynamic task-assignment were a huge part of getting the job done, like any good CryptoParty!

The open source, web-based (HTML5 and CSS) writing platform Booktype was chosen for the editing task, helping such a tentacular feat of parallel development to happen with relative ease. Asher also opened a couple of TitanPad pages to crowd-source the Manifesto and HowTo CryptoParty chapters.

Combined, this became the official CryptoParty Handbook by midnight October the 3rd, GMT+1.

The Book Sprint was 3 days in length and the full list of onsite participants included:

Adam Hyde (facilitator), Marta Peirano, Julian Oliver, Danja Vasiliev, Asher Wolf, Jan Gerber, Malte Dik, Brian Newbold, Brendan Howell, AT, Carola Hesse, Chris Pinchen, .. with cover art (illustrations to come) by Emile Denichaud.

Other material included

https://www.flossmanuals.net/bypassing-censorship
https://www.flossmanuals.net/basic-internet-security/

The material used in the second half of this book borrows from 2 books previously sprinted by FLOSS Manuals :
“How to Bypass Internet Censorship” 2008 & 2010
http://www.howtobypassinternetcensorship.org/
Available from FLOSS Manuals in 8 languages
Adam Hyde (Facilitator), Alice Miller, Edward Cherlin, Freerk Ohling, Janet Swisher, Niels Elgaard Larsen, Sam Tennyson, Seth Schoen, Tomas Krag, Tom Boyle, Nart Villeneuve, Ronald Deibert, Zorrino Zorrinno, Austin Martin, Ben Weissmann, Ariel Viera, Niels Elgaard Larsen, Steven Murdoch, Ross Anderson, helen varley jamieson, Roberto Rastapopoulos, Karen Reilly, Erinn Clark, Samuel L. Tennyson, A Ravi
“Basic Internet Security” 2011
http://basicinternetsecurity.org/
Adam Hyde (Facilitator), Jan Gerber, Dan Hassan, Erik Stein, Sacha van Geffen, Mart van Santen, Lonneke van der Velden, Emile den Tex and Douwe Schmidt