In message <199408061739.NAA05213@bwh.harvard.edu> Adam Shostack writes:

| If you are using unmodified Internet hardware and TCP/IP as the underlying | transport system, then your point of entry into a remailer network | definitely knows which machine is originating a message and the point | of exit definitely knows where it is going.

IP is not reliable & trustworthy. It it was, RFC931 ident servers would be useful. ;) Theres source routing to make packets appear to come from someplace else, and there is outright forgery, which has limits, but can work quite well.

My "if you are using unmodified ..." clause shows that I understand this. You can send from a very large network and forge your TCP/IP or (more difficult) Ethernet source address. But I can sit on the same network, build a table relating TCP/IP to ethernet (or whatever) addresses, and filter out messages that should not be there. There are commerical packages that do this sort of thing. Basically, this is a different topic. One problem is designing a generic software package and set of protocols that will allow you to route mail anonymously. This is a general problem. The hacking of specific networks is a different, if related, problem. -- Jim Dixon