Re: Long-Lived Remailers

An NSA operative with the code name 'tcmay@got.net' wrote...
> Let's call the first site "Alice" and the emanation site "Bob."
> 
> That is, all messages sent to the persistent site Alice appear to come from
> the site Bob.
> 
> The Church of Clams can simply send messages addressed to themselves
> through the Alice remailer and see immediately that they appear to come
> from Bob.

Unless Alice will automatically rotate between some random set
of Bob1, Bob2, Bob3... It also wouldn't be too difficult
to set up a message that goes through several points before
emerging at a randomly-chosen exitpoint, including a
completely independent remailer.

Actually, there's an Idea.  Set up a single address; use added
headers in the style of:

::
Remailers-To-Chain: 7
Remailers-To-Avoid: remailer@nsa.gov
Final-Destination: tcmay@got.net

Each remailer could construct a message that decrements the
remailers counter, preserving the other headers.  The
usual caveat on encrypting at each step would apply; but since
remailers' pubkeys are available, that's a trivial concern.

A lot more could be done with this general concept.  One immediate
problem is that the frontend address is a target, even though
it can't be obviously connected to any objectionable messages.
Packet sniffing is always a concern, etc etc...

Flame away.

dave

----  David Smith  Box 324  Cape Girardeau MO USA  63702
http://www.prairienet.org/~dsmith  dsmith@prairienet.org
Reality is only for those lacking in true imagination...
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>From: "David E. Smith" <dsmith@midwest.net>
>Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 17:31:23 -0600

>Actually, there's an Idea.  Set up a single address; use added
>headers in the style of:
>
>::
>Remailers-To-Chain: 7
>Remailers-To-Avoid: remailer@nsa.gov
>Final-Destination: tcmay@got.net

David,

This will not work.  The original sender must pick the path himself,
if maximum encryption to hide the final destination is to be used.
The properly used cypherpunks-style remailer network provides that as
long as even one remailer in the chain is trustworthy, your secret is
safe.  Under your scheme, if the first remailer is untrustworthy,
everything is blown.  This is because unless the original sender
pick's the path (or at least the last hop explicitly), the final
destination and message must be available to each hop.

Loren