Until the 1970s, cryptography was ironically a secret cooked in the military orbit for encryption and decryption of messages in times of war. Available to military agencies, out of the reach of the ordinary user.
But soon leading scientists began to make public their knowledge and studies on cryptography on the electronic level, inspiring the creation of tools in the service of privacy and security of user data.
Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May and John Gilmore are the creators of cypherpunk, a leaderless movement that began as a small group with monthly meetings at Gilmore's company, Cygnus Solutions, in California.
First, with discussions between Eric Hughes and Timothy May, which led Hughes to organize a meeting.
That first meeting was the same week that, by coincidence, PGP 2.0 was launched.
The 'The Cypherpunks' mailing list has been in existence since September 1992 , when several crypto activists went to cyberspace to communicate , organizing a mailing list , where everyone could register anonymously.
Mathematician and programmer, Hughes created and managed the email list The Cypherpunks , where he got to spread one of his developments : the first anonymous remailer - created alongside Hal Finney - in 1992.