Len Sassaman

Leonard Harris Sassaman (April 9, 1980 – July 3, 2011) was an American technologist, cryptographer, and privacy advocate. He graduated from The Hill School in 1998 and was involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force at the age of 18, contributing to the TCP/IP protocol. Sassaman moved to the Bay Area in 1999, becoming a central figure in the cypherpunk community. He lived with Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, and was known for his dedication to internet privacy and cryptography.

Career and Contributions

Sassaman’s career centered around cryptography and privacy protocols. He was the maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and the operator of the randseed remailer. He worked at Anonymizer as a security architect and was a PhD candidate at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium under the supervision of renowned cryptographers David Chaum and Bart Preneel. Throughout his career, Sassaman was an active member of the cypherpunk movement, contributing to PGP encryption software and the GNU Privacy Guard project.

Sassaman co-founded CodeCon, co-authored the Zimmermann–Sassaman key-signing protocol, and played a significant role in critiquing flaws in the X.509 certificate authority system. He was also a co-founder of the HotPETS workshop, which explored cutting-edge privacy technologies.

Personal Life

In 2006, Sassaman proposed to Meredith L. Patterson, a computer scientist, during a conference. The two collaborated on numerous research projects, including privacy flaws in OLPC’s Bitfrost platform. The couple announced their startup, Osogato, at SuperHappyDevHouse 21, focusing on music recommendation technology.

Satoshi Nakamoto Speculation

In a recent HBO documentary, speculation emerged that Len Sassaman may have been Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. Sassaman’s deep involvement in cryptography, his connections to the cypherpunk community, and his technical expertise have fueled ongoing debates about his possible role in Bitcoin’s creation, though no definitive proof has been provided.

Death and Legacy

Len Sassaman died by suicide on July 3, 2011, and was laid to rest in Leuven, Belgium. In his honor, an ASCII art tribute was embedded into the Bitcoin blockchain by his close friend Dan Kaminsky. Sassaman’s contributions to cryptography, privacy, and the cypherpunk movement have left a lasting impact, and his name remains linked to the ongoing mystery of Bitcoin’s origins.

• Technologist, cryptographer, and privacy advocate Retired