Why would anyone set up a remailer at Lance's (or Sameer's) machine? They have remailers running already. If the thugs break root and obtain one remailer key from a machine, they probably get all the keys on that machine, compromising all the remailers in one single attack. Or am I missing something? Is there any benefit of multiple remailers on a machine where root is running his own remailer?
There are multiple threats that remailers have to face; multiple remailers on one machine are jointly vulnerable to some of them, but separately vulnerable to others. If there are keys stored in plaintext on a machine, then root-breakers can steal them (unless it's running a multi-level secure operating system that can prevent that, if physical security is maintained.) Thugs confiscating the hardware or trashing the OS obviously break all the remailers at once, though that's only denial of service and not compromise. Offline remailers using POP, UUCP, or other mail forwarding also don't risk compromise (if they only accept encrypted messages), because they don't keep keys or perform encryption on the ISP's server. For all of these cases, the remailer-positive ISP provides a certain amount of flak catching, but can also avoid much of it because _he_ isn't running the remailer - his customers are, and if the remailer gets abused, maybe they'll have to become ex-customers. That's especially effective for ISPs that support customers with their own DNS names - foobar.com is owned by someone other than Sameer, and if Sameer has to squash them, maybe they start getting hosted by Lance instead, or by AOL, or by YAISP.SF.CA.US. Telnet-only shell account providers probably get a little less deniability than dial-only IP+POP providers or especially dial-only IP-only providers. (On the other hand, the fact that Sameer's systems are telnet-only means that users can be spread around to other dial-IP providers, including all those 10-hour AOLers he just has to keep squashing :-), while if he had dial-up users the thugs might go for telephone records. ==== What kind of technical infrastructure would help run remailers in environments like this? I can think of three things - Encrypted IP sessions (either IPv6, if it ever gets deployed, or swIPe) - Encrypted POP and SMTP client/server interactions. - User-based encrypted communications (SSH? SSL?) relaying POP/SMTP. If we're going to get convenient wide deployment before the millenium brings IPv6, the approach will either need to run on shell(-like) accounts only, or else will need to piggyback on SSL. Either way, rather than get everyone to replace POP3 with CryptoPOP (they haven't even done IMAP), it'll probably take some kind of relay that sits on your desktop machine, speaking POP3-server on one side and CryptoPOP on the other. And you'd have to handle firewalls. Is there any way to get Netscape to implement something like pop3: and smtp: services for the client software (or do them as plug-ins)? Adding them to a server (i.e.. Apache-SSL) would allow SSL to do the crypto, and would mean you could use https: proxies to handle firewalls, since everybody's got to deal with them anyway. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation