Flame Remailer <remailer@flame.alias.net> wrote:

Subject: Mixmaster status

There has been an offer to purchase and commercially develop Mixmaster. This will hasten the development of Mixmaster for other platforms (e.g. Dos, Windows Macintosh), and bring significant improvements to the interface, but I will not compromise on the level of security provided by Mixmaster. Free client software will continue to be available.

This could be the big breakthrough for remailers, finally thrusting them out of the hobbyist's closet into the corporate world.

I wonder. Where is the commercial market for remailers? Who has an application for them except hobbyinst? Why would there be a commercial incentive to run a mixmaster server, or even a client?

Could this "offer" be a red herring?

I wondered the same thing myself. It would certainly be a more cost-effective way for the NSA to compromise Mixmaster technology than by brute force. Consider this scenario ... Mixmaster get's bought by the Acme Crypto Company of Ft. Meade, MD. They "improve" it, and offer a new version. It's even FREE (for non-commerical use)! But their "improvements" make it incompatible with previous versions, and so you have to upgrade. The new "commercial" version comes with no SOURCE CODE, of course...