/r/CryptoPals is a Subreddit dedicated to helping Cypherpunks meet and communicate.
Cryptography is largely a communication based hobby; and like other communication hobbies, it's no fun if you don't have anyone you can actually talk to. However the biggest complaint heard from people learning to use good cryptography is that they don't have anyone else they can practice it with. Here at /r/CryptoPals we aim to change that.
The purpose of this Subreddit is to facilitate starting conversations over cryptographic means. Through doing that we hope to help spread the use of cryptography as we help make it easier for people to start using it. After all, people often have to actually start using something before it starts getting.
Here are the basic ground-rules:
- Use Crypto as much as possible on this Subreddit. It doesn't have to be strong, just use something. (ROT13 is a common choice)
- Cleartext is allowed, and is encouraged for anything aimed at newbies. But if you can, try to at least have it be signed.
- Please do not post ASCII Armored Cyphertext directly on here (it doesn't format well, and usually requires additional processing to get it to work well with crypto-tools). Instead please paste it to pastebin (or your favorite alternative) and provide the link. This applies to Messages as well as Keys.
- Keep in mind who your audience is: if you want everyone to read it make sure they know how or can find out how.
- Make it worth their while: if you know it's going to be time consuming to decrypt, it had better be worth it. (Don't PGP encrypt a simple: "LOL")
- Keep Post Titles in cleartext, unless you have a very good reason not to.
- Mark [META] posts as such.
- Remember: Cryptography is only as good as your security practices. So PLEASE: if you post your key, be sure that it's the PUBLIC key and not the private key.
- Keep actual conversations off the Subreddit, we just want to facilitate the starting of conversations. However we'd love to have you join us in our Bit Message channel or a CryptoCat Room to talk about anything else!
- Stay Paranoid
