jamiel@sybase.com (Jamie Lawrence) writes:
I was thinking some about remailers and means to create more effective ones. I think the idea of padding messages has been kicked around (has anyone implemented it?), but what about random compression? Some messages are compressed, others are padded, some are left alone, perhaps shooting for a median message size (everything coming from this mailer tries to be 9k, or as close as possible). Of course, this requires a standard so that other remailers downstream can make the message readable.
The real problem to be solved is this: given a set of input messages, and a set of output messages which represent decryptions of the input ones (along with perhaps a bit of extra processing), make it impossible to tell which output messages go with which input ones. Clearly, if the messages are of widely disparate sizes, and output messages are similar size to input messages, that won't do. That is where the idea of padding, and of standardized messages sizes, comes from. Hal