GUROchan
Welcome back. Again.
What is a Tripcode?
Tripcodes are a measure of identification used on most anonymous bulletin boards.
A tripcode is a hash (a random string of numbers generated when you combine a password with a salt), that is appended to the end of a username to identify that user. A "salt" is a random string of characters that a password can be hashed against to produce a tripcode. Only people who know that password can produce that specific hash. In most bulletin boards, that salt is the same, so you can use the same tripcode anywhere. However, many bulletin boards have an additional option, where you can chose to generate a "Secure Tripcode", which is when the salt used to hash the password is unique to that site, and secret. So no one can crack your tripcode.
To use a normal tripcode, place a pound symbol ("#") followed by a password or phrase after what you've entered into the [Name] field (ex. "User#password"). Upon submission, the server will generate the hash unique to that particular word or phrase. The previous example would display "User ◆ozOtJW9BFA" after being posted. No one else can impersonate you, because only you know the password to generate that hash. Secure tripcodes can be generated by placing 2 pound symbols ("##") before your password.
Trivia
- To prevent fraud, usernames are usually boldened, and tripcodes are left normal. Like this, Username◆Tripcode
- Tripcode technology has existed since 1999! It was originally written by Yoshihiro Nakao
- Tripcode passwords can typically only be 8 characters long
- Regular tripcodes are not very secure, as powerful computers can simply guess the password. The solution to this is to use a secure tripcode.
- Some people seek out "Vanity tripcodes", which are tripcodes whos randomly generated hash contain words or repeating patterns.
- A more secure alternative to tripcodes, "tripkeys" was proposed in October of 2020, but it never caught on due to being overly complicated.
Technical Details
In general, normal tripcode generation looks like this (PHP)
$tripkey = "#istrip"; $tripkey = substr $tripkey, 1; $salt = substr $tripkey . "H.", 1, 2; $salt =~ s/[^\.-z]/\./g; $salt =~ tr/:;<=>?@[\\]^_`/A-Ga-f/; $trip = crypt $tripkey, $salt; $trip = substr $trip, -10; $trip = "◆" . $trip; print $trip, "\n";
You can test out KolymaNET's tripcode algorithm at sys.kolyma.org/trip.php