Cypherpunks, Seeing as how everyone else is announcing their anonymous remailers, I may as well announce mine which is nearing completion. The remailer is written in Knuth's WEB using Perl so there is nice documentation. The remailer includes among other things, virtual addresses (handles), padding/packetizing messages (splitting them up and sending pieces through multiple remailer chains), chaining, mixing, a key-server, a list of remailers server, a socket-server to bypass the sendmail queue and get immediate error return, a stealth mode (delivery via direct SMTP or socket instead of through the local sendmail), secure remailer network (remailers sign and encrypt chained messages between each other), fake remailer traffic, and other small features. The virtual handles are fairly secure. They can be stored in the database as either plaintext real email addresses, virtual addresses located elsewhere on the remailer network, or SAEE cypherpunk remailer blocks (self-addressed encrypted envelope) The following text is taken from the WEB document and contains some addition information. Send any comments you have to me, rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu -Ray p.s. I expect that it will be ready for beta release in about two weeks. At that point, I would need some beta testers to set up a remailer network to make sure the socket-based and e-mail based networking works (especially the packetizing) p.p.s. e-mail commands are of the same form as the extropian's mailing list, backwards compatibility with the cypherpunks pasting token is not supported. Why? All headers in the message are ignored (and in socket-mode, there is no header anyway) and the prefered mode of operation is to encrypt the body and the commands so no outside eyes can see the remail request destination nor the message subject. ------------------------------CUT HERE--------------------------------------- \documentstyle{article} \title{Remailer 2.0 \\ An Improved Anonymous Remailer} \author{Ray Cromwell \\ rjc@@gnu.ai.mit.edu} \date{March 1, 1994} %$Id: remailer.w,v 0.2 94/03/01 03:22:27 rcromw1 Exp $ \newcommand{\rem}{{\tt Remailer 2.0\ }} \begin{document} \maketitle \tableofcontents \section{Introduction} The following text describes an improved anonymous remailer based on suggestions Tim May made on the cypherpunks\footnote{Send subscription requests to cypherpunks-request@@toad.com} mailing list a few weeks ago. I was stuck in the middle of school work and the {\em Extropians List Software} when Tim made the anouncement, but I had plenty of ideas on how to implement and improve remailers. So here at last is the result of my hacking. \begin{center} {\Large Remailer Improvement Principles} \begin{itemize} \item Secure Virtual Addresses \item Chaining \item Mix Delays \item Fake Remailer Traffic \item Padding/Packetizing Messages \item Builtin Remailer List Generation \item Builtin Public Key Server \item Socket Operation \item Stealth on Multiuser Systems \item Open Design \item Simple ``.forward'' Mode Operation \end{itemize} \end{center} [...] \subsubsection{Socket Mode} Socket mode provides a more secure form of operation by bypassing the standard sendmail delivery mechanism allowing a message to be piped directly to the remailer. In addition, the socket mode remailer functions as an information server allowing clients to request a publically networked list of public keys and up-to-date list of \rem servers. The port number can be anything but I'm suggesting we all agree to use port 2258. Upon connection to the remailer port, a greeting message will be sent to you of the following form. On the first line is a general greeting message which can be any string. On the next line is status information separated by ``/''. The status information in order is: \verb|remailer_name|, version, administrator e-mail address, and finally a list of flags. The flags are single character upper case letters specifying the following options. {\bf P} to specify that the machine is privately owned and single-user, {\bf M} for mixing enabled, {\bf C} for chaining, {\bf K} if the keyserver is turned on, {\bf E} if this remailer only accepts encrypted messages, and {\bf S} if stealth mode is on. \begin{center} \begin{verbatim} Example: telnet remailer.nsa.gov 2258 Connected to remailer.nsa.gov Escape character is '^]' Greetings, Welcome to Billy Bob Jake's Super Deluxe Remailer! bob_remailer/Version 1.1/bob@@remailer.nsa.gov/PMCKESF \end{verbatim} \end{center} While connected, entering {\bf list} for example, would get you a list of remailers, or {\bf keys} for an index of keys. You can also remail at this point and even get an error status. [...] \subsection{Reading and Writing the Remailer List} The remailer list is a simple text file which consists of a list of lines each containing a \verb|remailer_name|, ':', the e-mail address of the remailer, the flags for that remailer, and a timestamp recording the last time a response was received from this remailer. Each field is separated by a comma. `\#' Comments and null lines are allowed. A visible comment can be attached to a remailer by using the form ``\verb|remailer_name|\%comment string'' Additional comments to the same \verb|remailer_name| are concatenated. [...] \begin{verbatim} Example: ann's remailer: ann_remailer@@host.domain,PKCMS,77676734 ann's remailer% My remailer is special because my machine has ann's remailer% TEMPEST shielding around it. It can also self destruct ann's remailer% in the event of an NSA raid. \end{verbatim} \subsection{Database Functions} \rem uses a dbm database to record information neccessary to implement ``Virtual Addresses'' These are penet\footnote{`penet' refers to the anonymous posting service running at \verb|anon.penet.fi|. Send mail to \verb|help@@anon.penet.fi| for information.} style handles used by the anonymous remailer network to allow easy addressibility to anonymous recipients without the complication of anonymous encrypted return address blocks. Each record in the virtual database is keyed by the handle in the virtual address itself. A record contains 3 fields right now. The first is the storage method, the second is the user address connected with the handle. The third is a timestamp revealing the last time this address was used. Later, a fourth record might be added for electronic postage. [...] \subsubsection{Virtual Addresses, A Side Note} Virtual Addresses consist of a {\bf user handle} and an optional {\bf remailer name} separated by `{\bf \#}' I used `\#' because I wanted to differentiate virtual addresses from internet style addresses. An example of a virtual address is ``darkmodem\#deepanon'' which means that the message should be sent to the user connected with the handle ``darkmodem'' through the remailer named ``deepanon'' You can chain your own remailers by simply adding multiple remailer names to the virtual address. For example, ``user\#remailer1\#remailer2\#remailer3'' which will send the message first through remailer1, then remailer2, then remailer 3, and finally to whoever happens to be connected with ``user''. A special remailer name ``*'' is provided. Each instance of ``*'' in a remailer chain will be replaced by a random remailer. For example, ``darkmodem\#*#*#deepanon'' will first chain the message through two random remailers and then finally to deepanon. The random remailers chosen are not guaranteed to be unique. [...] \section{Change History} \begin{verbatim} $Log: remailer.w,v $ Revision 0.2 94/03/01 03:22:27 rcromw1 prerelease \end{verbatim} \section{Identifier Index} @u \end{document} ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. --