At 7:43 PM 3/5/96, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: (my mention of secure "remailer boxes" elided)

While a solution like that would be optimal, even just a version of Mixmaster that can use a secure RSA card would do wonders for security. The secret key is protected in the card and can't be stolen, even by root, without physically stealing the card. As long as the most of the remailers in your chain don't have compromised secret keys, it probably won't matter too much if the individual ops can examine the messages flowing through their remailer.

The cards are getting cheaper and can be bought off the shelf (for now). The hardest part of retrofitting existing remailer software would probably be extracting the data from the remailer packet and formatting it properly for the card to do encryption operations on it (and back).

I just wrote and sent off to the list some thoughts on using cheap PC hardware to do the crypto and remailer functions, thus taking the onus off the networked box to do the same. The idea of a _card_ is a good one, and one we did in fact kick around a couple of years ago. Recall the days of the "Hardcard"? A Winchester mounted on a card that plugged into a PC slot (this was back in the days when slots for cards were sometimes much more available than spare drive bay slots). A crypto card is an elegant approach, but may be less hacker-available than a really cheap PC. (And in my more paranoid moments, I imagine taking a nice, steel-cased cheapo PC and welding it shut...won't stop someone from seizing it and cutting it open, but you'd probably know if it happened...or, a return to sealing wax and seal rings! A low-tech solution to physical security, but something that may still be useful as an option.) --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."