Re: REMAIL: Cover traffic
Hal writes:
Several people have suggested that the remailers could send bogus messages amongst themselves in order to allow more "confusion and diffusion" of the other messages passing through the remailer network. The remailers could then batch up incoming messages fairly frequently and still have many messages in a batch.
The problem with this that I see is that, looking at the remailer network as a whole, you still may have one message in and one message out a short while later. The fact that it was temporarily mixed up with a bunch of other messages doesn't help much if this message is the only one to leave the network. If the Opponent has the ability to monitor all traffic into and out of all nodes of the network (as he would have to do anyway to defeat remailers even without this cover traffic) then he will easily be able to find the messages which are not aimed at other remailers.
How about extending the "send bogus messages" idea all the way out to the users of the remailer system? Part of the price of using the remailer system is that you will occasionally receive a bogus message. How might this work? Assume remailers know the addresses of all (or most) of the other remailers. In other words, assume a given remailers knows if an inbound message came from another remailer, or came from a non-remailer address. All inbound messages to a remailer from a non-remailer address would be considered a "use" of that remailer. A remailer would maintain a list of the addresses of "users" and would occasionally send bogus messages to a randomly selected entry from its user list. Inclusion into the list would be automatic. The list would be a large, but fixed sized FIFO, with old entries dropping off the end automatically. If the remailer system uses Digital Postage, then perhaps the bogus message could be a token for a free Digital Stamp, good for one message. I'm sure many will object to tracking the users of a remailer, but I don't see how tracking can be prevented, other than by mutual agreement. Can we use tracking to *increase* privacy? Jim_Miller@suite.com
Jim Miller writes,
How about extending the "send bogus messages" idea all the way out to the users of the remailer system? Part of the price of using the remailer system is that you will occasionally receive a bogus message.
How might this work?
Assume remailers know the addresses of all (or most) of the other remailers. In other words, assume a given remailers knows if an inbound message came from another remailer, or came from a non-remailer address.
All inbound messages to a remailer from a non-remailer address would be considered a "use" of that remailer. A remailer would maintain a list of the addresses of "users" and would occasionally send bogus messages to a randomly selected entry from its user list. Inclusion into the list would be automatic. The list would be a large, but fixed sized FIFO, with old entries dropping off the end automatically.
If the remailer system uses Digital Postage, then perhaps the bogus message could be a token for a free Digital Stamp, good for one message.
However, there would be a record of addresses which anonymous mail had been sent to- probably not a good idea. Julf's anonymizer has such a record, but I thought part of the idea of the cypherpunk remailers was to eliminate these records. I do find the digital postage discussion interesting... perhaps this would be a way Julf could pay the bills on his system. How exactly would this work? Would a "stamp" be a large random number? Would a stamp be tagged to prevent use by another user, or remain individually anonymous, but PK encrypted to the purchaser? Would full fledged Chaumian digital cash be implemented? Perhaps creating remailer stamps would be the best way to actually implement a test bed for the Cypherpunk Credit union. Start small with remailer stamps, work the bugs out of the system, then slowly expand. -john jdblair@nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu
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jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU -
jim＠bilbo.suite.com