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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

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


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