Re: Remailers and ecash

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Lucky Green wrote:
>On Sun, 28 Sep 1997, Anonymous wrote:
>> 
>> Nonsense.  Type 1 remailers offer a certain level of security.  It is
>> suitable for many applications.  Type 1 remailers require a fairly
>> determined attacker to thwart.  They would certainly keep you safe
>> from the IRS, but maybe not the NSA.
>> 
>> Even if you were running a child kidnapping ring and failing to report
>> the income, you would be pretty safe using Type 1 remailers.  The NSA
>> would never take the chance of revealing their capabilities just to
>> save a few kids.
>
>I disagree. The entire Type 1 networks can be trivially analyzed. It
>doesn't require an NSA for this. A single person that understands mixes
>and a few hackers to compromise some of the upstream, downstream servers,
>not even the remailers themselves, could do it.
>
>Type 1 remailers are fun toys. No more.

Please pardon my ignorance, but could you elaborate on this attack?
Assuming the user's machine is not compromised, in which case the game
is over, whose machines are being broken into?  Are you saying that
The Enemy just watches the messages going in and out of a particular
site and then watches the site where they suspect the messages are
going?

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html

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On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Anonymous wrote:
[In reply to my claim that Type 1 remailers are fun toys. No more].

> Please pardon my ignorance, but could you elaborate on this attack?
> Assuming the user's machine is not compromised, in which case the game
> is over, whose machines are being broken into?  Are you saying that
> The Enemy just watches the messages going in and out of a particular
> site and then watches the site where they suspect the messages are
> going?

Correct. The adversary watches messages move in and out of the mix. [This
is quite easy to acomplish, given the security or lack thereof, of much
network infrastructure]. I really don't have the time to write an intro on
this topic. Subscribe to
the Bugtraq mailing list for a year and you'll understand what I mean.

Once you have all the mail going in and out, you make use of the simple
fact that Type 1 messages must shrink with each hop. See the classic
essay "Mixmaster & Remailer Attacks" at
http://www.obscura.com/~loki/remailer/remailer-essay.html

IMHO, operating Type 1 remailers is doing the world a disfavor. It
provides a compromised technology  to a large number of people unaware of
the fact while, if anything, slowing down development and deployment of
better technology. Do you think it would have taken two (or more) years to
port Mixmaster to DOS had there been no Type 1 remailers? Of course not.

If you run a Type 1 remailer, do your users a favor: shut it down and
replace it with a Type 2.

 Thanks,
-- Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> PGP encrypted email preferred.
   "Tonga? Where the hell is Tonga? They have Cypherpunks there?"

Lucky Green wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Anonymous wrote:
> [In reply to my claim that Type 1 remailers are fun toys. No more].
> 
> > Please pardon my ignorance, but could you elaborate on this attack?
> > Assuming the user's machine is not compromised, in which case the game
> > is over, whose machines are being broken into?  Are you saying that
> > The Enemy just watches the messages going in and out of a particular
> > site and then watches the site where they suspect the messages are
> > going?
> 
> Correct. The adversary watches messages move in and out of the mix. [This
> is quite easy to acomplish, given the security or lack thereof, of much
> network infrastructure]. I really don't have the time to write an intro on
> this topic. Subscribe to
> the Bugtraq mailing list for a year and you'll understand what I mean.

  I run two Type 1 remailers on different machines which access
different
ISPs. I not only swap in/out messages between machines, I also send some
of the email via separate machines on separate accounts.
  The remail I handle is not super-clandestine stuff, it is mostly for
those who wish to post to health lists without insurance company narcs
gathering information they can use to fuck them out of their coverage.

  I also employ some tactics which I will not reveal, as my stance is
that one should proceed as if every spook in the world is monitoring
them, regardless of the level of security that may be sufficient if
one goes by surface appearances.
  If one is serious about anonymity, then one should always assume that
each and every remail contains life and death information that should
not be compromised. 

Fuck You
~~~~~~~~