I agree that there has been a certain stagnation, but I think things are going up again -- despite of the recent attack. There are three reliable nym servers in operation (nym.alias.net, weasel.owl.de, and redneck), and I understand that people are working on an improved system. There are at least three mail2news gateways, and Mixmaster remailers in at least four different countries (6 in the US, two in Germany, one each in the Netherlands, Canada and the UK, and two at unknown locations). Four of these have started operation last month -- hopefully others will follow. Not to forget the Geoff Keating's remailer applet, and a new web page with remailer statistics and reliability information that will be announced soon. Mixmaster 2.0.4, which is in beta test at four remailers, has the option to forward messages to a randomly selected remailer if used as the last hop (as Kent describes it, but it is known in advance whether a remailer will deliver a message directly, to avoid mail being bounced around infinitely.) Version 2.0.4 will be released soon; see http://www.thur.de/ulf/mix/ for information about the current beta. Cypherpunk remailers have been in operation for five years now. The remailer network has survived attacks by the Church of Scientology and by others. The recent incidents are annoyig, but there is no reason for dispair because of a bunch of bozos. As our friend Paul Strassman put it: "Conclusion: Anonymous re-mailers are here to stay. Like in the case of many virulent diseases, there is very little a free society can do to prohibit travel or exposure to sources of infection." Tim May wrote:
At 7:40 AM -0700 7/2/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
This probably has been suggested 20 years ago, but wouldn't Jeff's problem have been solved if the following slight modification were made to the algorithm: If you are the last remailer in a chain, then with probability p you pick another randomly choosen remailer to send through. If p is 1 end user mail would never come from you; if p is 0.5 then half the time you send the mail on one more step. The end user, then, can never be sure of which remailer will ultimately deliver the message. ...
This general sort of thing has been discussed...though not 20 years ago! :-0
I don't know about this particular mathematical algorithm, but things generally like it.
Long before a remailer shuts down, he should certainly adopt a strategy like this. Sending "his" traffic through randomly selected other remailers is certainly an option. (Any remailer can at any point insert additional hops, or even chains of hops, merely be addressing them correctly. Of course, the "original" (which may not be the real original, of course, as other remailers may have done the same thing) needs to "get back on track," else the decryptions won't work. But this is all a simple problem.
I don't know what gets discussed on the "remailer operators list," not being on it, but it sure seems to me that remailers have stagnated, and that some of the robust methods of reducing attacks on any particular remailer are not being used.
--Tim May
There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."