Re: Writing A Remailer

> Hi all. I want to try to write a re-mailer that will run on my ISP's UNIX
> shell account. I am familiar with Windows socket programming (C/C++) but
> have never done anything in the UNIX environment.

Developing these things is actually eaiser to do in UNIX than 
Windows.

I guess it depends on where you wish to being.  Do you wish to write 
a remailer from scratch, or do you wish to just run a remailer?

In either case, take a look at what other people have done, one site 
I like is ftp.hacktic.nl, there is source for a number of remailers 
there, among other things.

You could compile that, and see what you like and dislike about a 
given remailer, and then adjust the code appropriatly.

Most are written in C, so if you know C, you won't have very many 
problems.

One thing to note, UNIX privilages, you would want to run your 
remailer as a deamon, a constantly running program(similar to a  DOS TSR 
or NT Service). I am not sure if your ISP gives you enough access to 
run deamons.

Good Luck


Michael Peponis

> > Hi all. I want to try to write a re-mailer that will run on my ISP's UNIX
> > shell account. I am familiar with Windows socket programming (C/C++) but
> > have never done anything in the UNIX environment.
> 
> One thing to note, UNIX privilages, you would want to run your 
> remailer as a deamon, a constantly running program(similar to a  DOS TSR 
> or NT Service). I am not sure if your ISP gives you enough access to 
> run deamons.
> 
> Good Luck
> Michael Peponis
>
I think you would also be able to use Procmail and Formail (two UNIX mail 
processing programs) to set up a quick and dirty remailer.  

Procmail could be set to look at the headers of a message for something 
like a header of "Remail-To:", or [REMAIL] in the Subject: header.  If it 
finds this, it would use Formail to replace the headers with generic 
information, put the specified address into the To: field, and send the 
message on its way.  I don't really know if you'd be able to set this up 
for chaining remailers or not though.



Zach Babayco 

zachb@netcom.com <-------finger for PGP public key
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/4127
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