Crypto in 1993: WIRED cover story on Cypherpunks turns 32
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Thirty-two years ago this week, in May 1993, WIRED released its second-ever print edition featuring three legendary cypherpunks on the cover: Tim May, Eric Hughes and John Gilmore.
Steven Levy’s piece, “Crypto Rebels,” handily documents the genesis of the Cypherpunk movement, starting almost two decades earlier in 1975, when Whitfield Diffie led the creation of public-key cryptography alongside Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle.
Until then, the US government codebreakers had dominated cryptography through the National Security Agency (NSA). Cryptographic tools were considered weapons under the Arms Regulation law, “right alongside…
