Assange builds deniable encryption for activists and argues that anonymity is a matter of physical safety

JUN 01 1997 · 12:00

Video: CYPHERPUNKS Julian ASSANGE Show PART 1 Date: 1997-01-01 · Type: dissident · Tags: julian-assange, rubberhose, deniable-encryption, wikileaks, cypherpunks, 1997, human-rights, suelette-dreyfus Rubberhose hid volumes inside volumes. The torturer who extracted one password would find plausible decoys and no way to prove the deeper layer existed. Before WikiLeaks, before the Ecuadorian embassy and Belmarsh Prison, Julian Assange — Melbourne-based, in his mid-twenties, posting to the cypherpunks list as proff@suburbia.net — was working on a specific version of the anonymity problem: not how to hide traffic from surveillance but how to protect a source whose body could be coerced. In 1997, with researcher Suelette Dreyfus and cryptographer Ralf Weinmann, he released Rubberhose — a deniable encryption filesystem designed for exactly the scenario its name invoked. Rubberhose hid encrypted volumes inside other encrypted volumes. An interrogator who extracted one password under duress would unlock plausible but inert decoy data, with no cryptographic mechanism available to prove that a deeper layer existed. The system was explicitly targeted at human-rights workers in coercive jurisdictions — the problem set was not corporate data protection or privacy from advertisers but survival under state-sponsored interrogation. The Rubberhose concept was carried forward into TrueCrypt's hidden volumes feature (2004) and influenced the design of the WikiLeaks submission portal (2006). The same year, Assange co-authored Underground with Dreyfus, an account of the Australian and international hacker scene that drew on his own activities under the handle Mendax. The continuity from Rubberhose to WikiLeaks is architectural and political: both treat the human source as the entity the cryptography must protect against their own compelled testimony. Assange was, in this period, doing the most practically serious work within the cypherpunk tradition — not theorizing about what crypto anarchy might enable but engineering, for immediate deployment, a system whose only conceivable users were people in danger. The subsequent story is too large for this card and too unresolved. Facts • Joined the cypherpunks list approximately 1993–1994; posted as proff@suburbia.net • Rubberhose released 1997, co-developed with Suelette Dreyfus and Ralf Weinmann • Designed specifically for human-rights workers in coercive jurisdictions; implements deniable encryption • Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession (1997) — written with Dreyfus, drawing on Assange's activities as Mendax • Rubberhose concept carried into TrueCrypt hidden volumes (2004) and influenced WikiLeaks submission portal (2006) Primary Documents • Julian Assange — Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange • Suelette Dreyfus, Underground — full-text mirror — https://suelette.com/underground/