At 2:25 PM -0700 9/2/96, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote:
I don't really see the use of this complicated scheme. The main problem seems to be that if M floods remailer R with messages to B, and A sends a message to C through R, then it will be clear to M that A's message was destined for C.
Rather than divert messages, then, I propose that for each input message there is a 10% chance that a piece of cover traffic is generated. Thus, if M sends 50 messages through R and sees 6 outgoing messages going to remailers C, D, and D, he will now know which messages correspond to the message that A send through.
I quite like this load based cover traffic scheme. Another defense against flood is to slow the rate at which the messages leave the system. A simple modification to Mixmaster (which will be in the next version) is to have an exponential pool. The operator sets two parameters, a minimum pool size, and a fraction of messages to send each time the pool is processed. 10 messages and 10% seem like good settings to me. Given at least one cover message each time the pool is processed, flooding is much less productive. A side benefit of this system is a reduction in the load on the sendmail system during a flood or spam. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki@obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------