Asendmail For Mix [Testers Needed]

For the past several days i've been working on a method of concealing the
identity of Remailers..

I've put together a program that acts as a replacement for sendmail with
mixmaster, along with a list of 135 sites on the internet that either do
not add received headers at all, or add headers that don't indicate who
the originator was.

The program is called asendmail and what it does is pick 2 servers from
its list of proxy's (using a modified version of the rnd generator from
Lance Cottrell's reorder package). It then opens an smtp socket with the
first server, sends the second servers name in its introduction, and
procedes to send its mail that way.

I'm not an expert on such things, but a careful look at the resulting mail
has revealed no sign of the originating remailers address. As far as I can
tell the only way to identify the remailer would be by obtaining logs from
the proxy host, if they exist.

Asendmail is being used for all mixmaster mail sent through
ncognito@cyberpass.net currently.  It would be helpful in debugging if
some people could route a few test messages through the mailer, examine
the headers, verify that mail has arrived, etc. Any and all feedback will
be greatly appreciated.

Assuming that the results of this testing are acceptable, i will make a
beta version of asendmail, and my (ever expanding) proxy list available.

Thanks,

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On Mon, 27 May 1996, Ben Holiday wrote:

> For the past several days i've been working on a method of concealing the
> identity of Remailers..
> 
> I've put together a program that acts as a replacement for sendmail with
> mixmaster, along with a list of 135 sites on the internet that either do
> not add received headers at all, or add headers that don't indicate who
> the originator was.

	Do these sites know that you are using them to mask a remailer? I
would think it would be very bad netiquette to cause a system to be
investigated by some official authority because your remailer was using
them as a front without their express knowledge and permission.

	I would think that obtaining permission would be the least you
could do, but that would also defeat the anomitity by the nature of
notifying the site that you wish to use them. This does not apply to
chaining remailers as by running a remailer, the operator of the remailer
is tacitly giving permission to be used in the chain in most cases.

 John Perry - KG5RG - perry@alpha.jpunix.com -  PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome!
 WWW - http://www.jpunix.com
 PGP 2.62 key for perry@jpunix.com is on the keyservers.


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On Mon, 27 May 1996, John A. Perry wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> On Mon, 27 May 1996, Ben Holiday wrote:
> 
> > I've put together a program that acts as a replacement for sendmail with
> > mixmaster, along with a list of 135 sites on the internet that either do
> > not add received headers at all, or add headers that don't indicate who
> > the originator was.
> 
> 	Do these sites know that you are using them to mask a remailer? I
> would think it would be very bad netiquette to cause a system to be
> investigated by some official authority because your remailer was using
> them as a front without their express knowledge and permission.

No, they dont. And yes, it probably is bad netiquette. Unfortunately, the
idea of your friendly neighborhood remailer is dying very quickly. Using
other remailers as out-points is fine in so far as it goes, but someone
eventually must eventually send mail to someone who isnt a remailer.

If we define a remailer as a site that strips identifying headers from
mail and passes it to its destination, then these sites are in fact
remailers. They simply dont advertise themselves as such.

Why is it that hundreds of government and university machines can operate
what amount to anonymous remailers, and no one pays any attention, and yet
cypherpunks are threatened with jail time for what is essentially the same
thing?