usenet-to-mail

"Robert A. Hayden" <hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu> wrote:
>More importantly, are there are usenet-to-mail gateways?

My first impression was that that was just a joke. Then I thought it might
be a very good idea after all. Then I thought it surely wasn't a joke, but
also wasn't a very good idea. Now I'm not sure. :)

It seems like it might be a good idea. All the anon remailers could watch a
certain newsgroup, alt.remailer.submit perhaps, and take messages with a
"anon-remailer-attn: specific@remailer", and deal with them just like
normal mail input.

Would there by any benefit to doing this at all over the present system?
Why would someone submit a message to the remailer "bramble" via newsgroup
instead of just mailing it?  Unless you find an anonymous way to post to
the newsgroup in the first place, your security seems to be seriously
compromised. Even if everything is encrypted, you've made traffic analysis
a huge amount easier.  And if you are finding a way to post the a newsgroup
anonymously in the first place, odds are you have some other entry point to
the remailer bramble, so why make a stop on the newsgroup opening yourself
up to traffic analysis?

Now that I think about it, it seems that there isn't really any reason for
such a thing.

On Sat, 19 Nov 1994, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

> "Robert A. Hayden" <hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu> wrote:
> >More importantly, are there are usenet-to-mail gateways?
> 
[good stuph left out here..]
> 
> Would there by any benefit to doing this at all over the present system?
> Why would someone submit a message to the remailer "bramble" via newsgroup
> instead of just mailing it?  Unless you find an anonymous way to post to
> the newsgroup in the first place, your security seems to be seriously
> compromised. Even if everything is encrypted, you've made traffic analysis
> a huge amount easier.  And if you are finding a way to post the a newsgroup
> anonymously in the first place, odds are you have some other entry point to
> the remailer bramble, so why make a stop on the newsgroup opening yourself
> up to traffic analysis?

For a long time I've wanted to set up a remailer that instead of just 
re-mailing the input mail would telnet to port 25 on a specified machine 
and spoof the headers exactly like you tell it to, or that would anon-ftp 
upload the "mail" message to a specified site, or that would continualy 
check a local (or remote) ftp directory for filenames that match a 
certain wildcard, processing them as inbound mail... I can think of a 
couple of situations under which having a mailer pick up off a newsgroup 
would be very usefull... send a pgp encrypted, nested message through a 
chain of four remailers... one is a standard-ish remailer which peels off 
the first layer of encryption and posts your message to a certain 
newsgroup. The second one, whos address remains a mystery, spoofs or 
remails the message it found in the newsgroup to a different newsgroup, 
where it is again picked up and decrypted by the third remailer, which 
uploads it to an ftp site watched by the fourth, again anonymous 
remailer, who picks it up and remails it to the recipient. It may all be 
an excercise in futility, I'm not an expert on that kinda thing, but it 
sure /seems/ more secure to me...

Happy Hunting, -Chris.

______________________________________________________________________________
Christian Douglas Odhner     | "The NSA can have my secret key when they pry
cdodhner@primenet.com	     | it from my cold, dead, hands... But they shall
pgp 2.3 public key by finger | NEVER have the password it's encrypted with!"
cypherpunks         WOw            dCD           Traskcom          Team Stupid
  Key fingerprint =  58 62 A2 84 FD 4F 56 38  82 69 6F 08 E4 F1 79 11 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> For a long time I've wanted to set up a remailer that instead of just 
> re-mailing the input mail would telnet to port 25 on a specified machine 
> and spoof the headers exactly like you tell it to, or that would anon-ftp 
> upload the "mail" message to a specified site, or that would continualy 
> check a local (or remote) ftp directory for filenames that match a 
> certain wildcard, processing them as inbound mail... I can think of a 
> couple of situations under which having a mailer pick up off a newsgroup 
> would be very usefull... send a pgp encrypted, nested message through a 
> chain of four remailers... one is a standard-ish remailer which peels off 
> the first layer of encryption and posts your message to a certain 
> newsgroup. The second one, whos address remains a mystery, spoofs or 
> remails the message it found in the newsgroup to a different newsgroup, 
> where it is again picked up and decrypted by the third remailer, which 
> uploads it to an ftp site watched by the fourth, again anonymous 
> remailer, who picks it up and remails it to the recipient. It may all be 
> an excercise in futility, I'm not an expert on that kinda thing, but it 
> sure /seems/ more secure to me...

Here's a script that you might want to use as a base:

(echo helo;echo mail from:\<`logname`@`hostname`.`domainname`\>;echo rcpt to:\<$1\>;echo data
echo X-Info-1: This message was sent using fastmail 0.1 - contact ecarp@netcom.com
echo X-Info-2: for more information. Copyright 1994 by Ed Carp.
cat
echo .;echo quit)|telnet `echo $1|cut -f2 -d@` 25
- -- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com

Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
                       ** PGP encrypted email preferred! **

"What's the use of distant travel if only to discover - you're homeless in
your heart."  --Basia, "Yearning"

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