Re: REMAIL: pseudo-account remailer @andrew gains anonymous feature

>
>I added an anonymous feature to my remailer.
>
>If you have an address of the form mg5n+eaxxx@andrew.cmu.edu,
>anonymous mail can be sent to that address by changing it to the format:
>mg5n+anxxx@andrew.cmu.edu
>An encrypted reply address is created for the sender of the anonymous message.

What happens if I already have an encrypted reply address? What happens
if I already have SIX encrypted reply addresses? Which one is used? 
Or is *another* one created?


--
  Ryan Perkins - 1:340/13    | I feel that suicide jumpers see a glimpse of
ub075@freenet.victoria.bc.ca | sanity as they throw themselves from the ledge.
 Ask for PGP 2.3 public key  | That's why they scream all the way down.
          8C5357 : 9F FF BA 93 54 D5 18 78 4B 1E DA GC E3 4E

Ryan A. Perkins wrote:

> >An encrypted reply address is created for the sender of the anonymous
message.
>
> What happens if I already have an encrypted reply address? What happens
> if I already have SIX encrypted reply addresses? Which one is used?
> Or is *another* one created?

Another one is created, since no records are kept of what addresses you
already have.

I am somewhat unsure of what to do in this situation.  As I have it set
up now, it will always create the same address for replies (but you can
still get as many different ones as you like from mg5n+getid@andrew...) 
so if you send two messages to mg5n+anxxx... addresses, they will both
have the same reply address.  I could change this and have it create
different ones each time, which would preserve anonymnity better, but
this could lead to confusion when replying to messages, because it'd be
difficult to tell if two messages came from the same person or not.  I
suppose a more complicated system could be set up where the users would
specify which reply address they wanted to use, or where replying to a
certain address would always allocate the same reply-id.  Any
suggestions?

On Sat, 9 Apr 1994, Matthew J Ghio wrote:

> Ryan A. Perkins wrote:
> 
> > >An encrypted reply address is created for the sender of the anonymous
> message.
> >
> > What happens if I already have an encrypted reply address? What happens
> > if I already have SIX encrypted reply addresses? Which one is used?
> > Or is *another* one created?
> 
> Another one is created, since no records are kept of what addresses you
> already have.
> 
> I am somewhat unsure of what to do in this situation.  As I have it set
> up now, it will always create the same address for replies (but you can
> still get as many different ones as you like from mg5n+getid@andrew...) 
> so if you send two messages to mg5n+anxxx... addresses, they will both
> have the same reply address.  I could change this and have it create
> different ones each time, which would preserve anonymnity better, but
> this could lead to confusion when replying to messages, because it'd be
> difficult to tell if two messages came from the same person or not.  I
> suppose a more complicated system could be set up where the users would
> specify which reply address they wanted to use, or where replying to a
> certain address would always allocate the same reply-id.  Any
> suggestions?

How about generating a secure hash and using that as an index into a 
table?  If there's an address already there, use that - otherwise, 
generate one.

Generate the hash from the incoming address, of course.  That way, you 
don't need to keep track of anon-id-to-real-id mappings, yet guarantee 
that each user has one and only one anon address. Of course, folks coming 
in from different hosts will have different anon ID's.

Or have I missed some blindingly obvious technical point thaqt would make 
this impossible?

Ed Carp <ecarp@netcom.com> wrote:

> How about generating a secure hash and using that as an index
> into a table?  If there's an address already there, use that -
> otherwise, generate one.
> 
> Generate the hash from the incoming address, of course.  That way,
> you  don't need to keep track of anon-id-to-real-id mappings, yet
> guarantee that each user has one and only one anon address. Of
> course, folks coming in from different hosts will have different
> anon ID's.
> 
> Or have I missed some blindingly obvious technical point thaqt
> would make this impossible?

I don't see how this would prevent me from having to keep track of
anon-id-to-real-id mappings.  It could work for sending mail, but I'd
still have to have some way of keeping track of the real ids for the
replies.

On Sun, 10 Apr 1994, Matthew J Ghio wrote:

> Ed Carp <ecarp@netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> > How about generating a secure hash and using that as an index
> > into a table?  If there's an address already there, use that -
> > otherwise, generate one.
> > 
> > Generate the hash from the incoming address, of course.  That way,
> > you  don't need to keep track of anon-id-to-real-id mappings, yet
> > guarantee that each user has one and only one anon address. Of
> > course, folks coming in from different hosts will have different
> > anon ID's.
> > 
> > Or have I missed some blindingly obvious technical point thaqt
> > would make this impossible?
> 
> I don't see how this would prevent me from having to keep track of
> anon-id-to-real-id mappings.  It could work for sending mail, but I'd
> still have to have some way of keeping track of the real ids for the
> replies.

Ah, yes, I *knew* I had missed something obvious...  Thanks.