Re: Detweiler abuse again
I understand Eric's comments about the use of logging to "catch" Detweiler in the act here. Frankly, I expected more criticism of that action than I received. I should make it clear that I do not routinely log, but that after receiving the complaints I forwarded to the list I added a line to my maildelivery file to save all messages with the same subject line as the offending message to a file. Within minutes, the message from Detweiler appeared. I'm not sure Eric's idea about connecting via sockets would eliminate all possibilities of logging. It seems that with telnet, at least, the systems that you connect to are able to find your host name. Still, host names would be more private than full addresses. Grepping the Blacknet log file for "request-remailing-to" shows the following messages which have accumulated overnight: request-remailing-to: comp.sys.ti.explorer@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: rec.mag@news.demon.co.uk request-remailing-to: rec.sport.football.australian.usenet@decwrl.dec.com request-remailing-to: alt.fan.addams@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: soc.history@news.demon.co.uk request-remailing-to: comp.archives.msdos.d@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: rec.pets.dogs.usenet@decwrl.dec.com request-remailing-to: comp.sys.sgi.graphics.usenet@decwrl.dec.com request-remailing-to: alt.fan.vejcik@news.demon.co.uk request-remailing-to: alt.fan.addams@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: rec.pets.dogs.usenet@decwrl.dec.com request-remailing-to: alt.abortion.inequity@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: alt.security@news.demon.co.uk request-remailing-to: alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys.usenet@decwrl.dec.com request-remailing-to: rec.music.classical.guitar@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: news.announce.important@news.demon.co.uk request-remailing-to: misc.health.alternative.usenet@decwrl.dec.com request-remailing-to: alt.beer@news.cs.indiana.edu request-remailing-to: alt.archery@news.demon.co.uk request-remailing-to: alt.sports.basketball.nba.wash-bullets.usenet@decwrl.dec.com One good thing is that he is apparently targetting just a few mail-to-news gateways. I was worried because one of the complaints I got came from a mailing list; it would be completely infeasible to block all mailing list addresses. But blocking the mail-to-news gateways would be pretty easy. (As an aside: how do these gateways take the heat? Should I suggest to those complaining to me that my system is intended for email, not usenet, anon- ymity, and that they should direct their complaints to the mail-to-news gateways which are the "real" cause of the problem? Is this tactic likely to be politically effective?) Now, I haven't received any complaints from the administration at this commercial system for which I pay about $30 a month. In fact, I have never received any complaints about my remailer from the admins, even though I assume that at least some complaints have been sent to root or postmaster here. I know that the owner of the Portal system was at the hacker's conference a couple of years ago (according to a report on the cp list), and that he supposedly pledged his commitment to the concept of anonymous remailers. I have never contacted him, but perhaps I am protected to some extent by his beliefs. At this point, I will probably take no action and see if this blows over. If I get more complaints, though, I will probably block the mail-to-news gateways as outgoing addresses. Another alternative would be for me to forward outgoing mail which is directed to the mail-to-news gateways through another remailer, such as Xenon's at netcom.com. Thanks for the suggestions and advice. Hal
I'm not sure Eric's idea about connecting via sockets would eliminate all possibilities of logging.
I did not mean to imply this. Using daemons would get rid of the _default_ loging that occurs on systems. Changing logging from opt-out to opt-in would make a large practical difference right now.
It seems that with telnet, at least, the systems that you connect to are able to find your host name. Still, host names would be more private than full addresses.
This was exactly my point in a previous article. An email address identifies both a machine and a user, where an IP connection (e.g. telnet) only reveals the machine. Now if the sysadmin of the originating machine logs and shares information with the destination machine, the user can be identified. But again, this is an opt-in monitoring system. Eric
hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes) writes:
I'm not sure Eric's idea about connecting via sockets would eliminate all possibilities of logging.
I did not mean to imply this. Using daemons would get rid of the _default_ loging that occurs on systems. Changing logging from opt-out to opt-in would make a large practical difference right now.
Using a remailer daemon on a well-known port (777, anyone?) would only result in defeating logging that is done via SMTP-agents like sendmail. It is still possible for the sysadmin on the host to do a TCP-wrapper log which logs the connection to the remailer from the originator. Again, this only provides IP address information, which makes it easy to hide if the originator comes from a machine like netcom or the well.
This was exactly my point in a previous article. An email address identifies both a machine and a user, where an IP connection (e.g. telnet) only reveals the machine. Now if the sysadmin of the originating machine logs and shares information with the destination machine, the user can be identified. But again, this is an opt-in monitoring system.
Yes... also the remailer daemon could do opt-in monitoring of both ends of it's connections... Full accountability could be possible, but only with the complicity of everyone in the path... Jon Boone | PSC Networking | boone@psc.edu | (412) 268-6959 | PGP Key # B75699 PGP Public Key fingerprint = 23 59 EC 91 47 A6 E3 92 9E A8 96 6A D9 27 C9 6C
(As an aside: how do these gateways take the heat? Should I suggest to those complaining to me that my system is intended for email, not usenet, anonymity, and that they should direct their complaints to the mail-to-news gateways which are the "real" cause of the problem? Is this tactic likely to be politically effective?)
No, and it would probably backfire. If the mail-to-usenet gateways get abused, the administrators of the gates will probably start blocking incoming mail, as CMU and Berkeley have done. (The CMU gateway is outnews+netnews.group.name@andrew.cmu.edu You can try it and see what results you get.) It might be more effective if you bounced messages from detweiler back to him, CC: postmaster with a notice saying "Due to repeated abuses of this email service, messages from detweile@cs.colostate.edu are no longed accepted. Unsent message follows:
participants (4)
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Hal -
hughes＠ah.com -
Jon 'Iain' Boone -
Matthew J Ghio