SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP@smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil writes:
mark m wrote:
In order for anonymous remailers to be completely anonymous, only one remailer in the chain has to be trustworthy. If a message is chained through N remailers and N-1 of those remailers are run by spooks, the anonymity of the message depends on the remaining remailer.
well, actually, the first remailer has to be the trustworthy one. you send a msg to the first with your "real" address, and if the spook is there, voila! so... i understand your point, but still, it has to be the first one.
The first remailer doesn't necessarily have to be trustworthy; it depends what it is you are trying to hide. If you are trying to hide the fact that you are sending mail via remailers, then to some extent the first remailer matters. But presumably, if you are sending to remailers, watching all the email you send would be the obvious way to see if you are using remailers. Your options to hide the fact that you are sending to remailers would be to forward your mail (encrypted) to someone else who does use remailers. Or perhaps a hypothetical system in which you steganographically encode your to be remailed message to a newsgroup which is scanned by the your entry remailer. If on the other hand you are trying to conceal who you are sending to, and you don't send to many messages, using mixmaster you would retain some anonymity even if all bar one remailer were run by the spooks. As mixmaster remailers have uniform packet sizes, and reordering of messages, it's not going to be obvious which message coming from the trustworthy remailer is yours. Flooding attacks on remailers are when the spook run remailers try to keep the trustworthy remailer fairly loaded with email, so that the non-spook traffic shows up. In the worst case, only your message would be non-spook traffic in a given reorder batch, and you would lose all anonymity. Adam -- RSA in perl: print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`