Re: What about making re-mailers automatically chain?
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: gcg@pb.net, cypherpunks@toad.com Date: Sun Sep 29 04:06:38 1996
Would it be a good idea to have a re-mailer "randomly" decide whether to send the mail to the destination or to another re-mailer. If all re-mailers performed this way, not even the sender would know the path. The chain could be short sometimes and long others. Granted, there is a possibility that every mailer decides to chain instead of sending the message to the recip, but some clever counter tag could keep the number of links to a certain maximum. The "randomness" of this would aid in traffic analysis, and of course each mailer that decides to chain the mail would encrypt under the next mailer's pub key. Any thoughts?
I dunno about that one. Even if the message itself is encrypted, every remailer has to have the address of the final recipient for your plan to work. And if you have cleartext for that message (oops!) then any remailer operator could read it. More traffic is of course a good thing, but I'm just kinda iffy on the concept. dave - ----- David E. Smith, P O Box 324, Cape Girardeau MO USA 63702 dsmith@prairienet.org http://www.prairienet.org/~dsmith send mail with subject of "send pgp-key" for my PGP public key "Madness takes its toll . . . please have exact change ready." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMk48IzVTwUKWHSsJAQEMugf5AYs0epJSF5ukk5aKvttFXJTHnBzvCtQH aCgxJnnv6bQGQm2fu8Ot7C9UgFNE8NTHJaPHFAkR21/YgwvhUUNhbUrHgz5zZMJ1 oY3jJJgIyLJsyw/+bsHHQc9oDl5VBr+V8xVQBWNR45N0vHx6wWwH5ZjmhBHEfJcg 97CDvygXh6nYJKQplRJ49wYYT29PMg0dONrQSXtYcH5sAhtPEkTzgIKqg0O3MVen tGG11Vl+0ghK2RIwJCoWKMXsqmJexP06+5AdeOLwHsc0QmPkuweKMvWSkF1R0ubR chHFaGlmduT0zNyGB4gIiWl71DYA2EgGSbxOZaGtEa57gJ8tFHVl1g== =PVbP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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At 4:14 AM -0500 9/29/96, David E. Smith wrote:
I dunno about that one. Even if the message itself is encrypted, every remailer has to have the address of the final recipient for your plan to work. And if you have cleartext for that message ...
Actually, as I read the original proposal, it was to only _insert_ additional links. Thus, imagine the following remailer chain, with Alice sending to Zeke through a chain, represented in parentheses (like LISP): Bob(Charles(Dora(Ed(Frank(........Zeke))))....) (All messages are encrypted, etc.) Now, imagine that Charles elects to add two additial chains, XXXX and YYYY (to make them stand out in my representation). From his point on, the chain will look like: (XXXX(YYYY(Dora(Ed(Frank(........Zeke))))....) Likewise, any of the later remailers can add more links, etc. Some dangers are that "lost Dutchman" messages will remain in the system forever. This gets fixed by probablistic criteria, to produce convergence. Or with digital postage, which causes convergence for ontological reasons. Adding new links, or adding "middleman" links, is always possible. We've had several discussions of this over the years. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
participants (2)
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David E. Smith
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Timothy C. May