If the net is sufficiently large, then the remailers can be considered to be registers, each holding one message for a random length of time, and allow reordering just by that alone. Of course, for this to work, traffic analysis has to be defeated in another way. Probably in ZKS's
It is interesting to note the two sides of the same coin...mix protocols in theory vs the realities of implementation on these devices. On Sat, 7 Oct 2000, Sean Roach wrote: planned, but
last I checked, not implemented, constant activity among nodes.
This scheme is extremely open to attack, especially when you take into account that many of the nodes will be hostile. Even if the underlying mix protocol were robust enough to protect the sender over hostile nodes, traffic analysis, as you mentioned, is a major weakness (for example, messages could be traced throught the network). The idea and papers brought forth in David's post might be of use here. Instead of passing one message at a time through nodes, a list of messages could filter through the nodes. But, those damned memory constraints...
Of course, the more traffic, the easier it will be for the intranets where these things are set up to locate them, and take them down.
If the devices' communication piggy-backed on common protocols like http, it would be easier to mask, especially in high traffic areas. But, the communication would need to permuted in some way that a generic pattern match would not detect it. Otherwise, IDS vendors and the like will add rules to detect such traffic.
The nodes ping each other on a regular basis, if a node fails to respond to a ping, that node is written off. Perhaps the next general cover traffic includes information that such-n-such node appears to be compromised. If a node receives NO pings, then it might also write itself off, and blank memory.
Who do you trust becomes an issue if nodes pass information around.
Or did you mean in addition to disposible remailers, instead of ways to hide, distribute them?
I meant in addition to, but that is an interesting distribution scheme. As the world becomes more and more connected and devices get smaller and more powerful, the opportunity to plant and exploit rogue, networked modules becomes far greater. A person could have a great deal of fun with this stuff. The government already does. -andrew