[ot][spam] remailer notes

I’m reading some of http://www.faqs.org/faqs/privacy/anon-server/faq/use/ . At the moment I’ve read through part3 (but ended up taking notes through the end). I’ve also read a couple list posts. - the faq is considered out of date by many years - there are paid remailer networks people use - a lot of activity regarding windows machines - running a remailer takes a little upkeep - send test messages to alt.test or misc.tes - cypherpunk or type I remailers accept commands and forward messages - they can be crafted in a text editor [1] - commands also accepted in subject line: Subject: remailer-key Subject: remailer-conf Subject: remailer-help Subject: remailer-stats - mixmaster or type II remailers perform onion routing and obfuscation - mixmaster remailers are used with client software rather than manually part 4: - the security of a remailer node relies on its secure administration; hence encrypted hops - the remailer people experienced traffic analysis attacks - at the time of writing of the faq, four newer projects were listed: WOF http://www.bigfoot.com/~potatoware/wof/, RadioClash http://piratech.net/radioclash/, Publius http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~waldman/publius/, Freenet http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ - “middleman” remailers always add an additional hop if one is not provided - using multiple hops is called “chaining” - for the message to be hidden from basic node and network operators, it must be both encrypted and chained - manual chaining for old type I remailers instructions pasted at [2] - mail2news gateways forward emails to newsgroups nonanonymously - remailers can do this with command: Anon-Post-To: misc.test - mail2news gateways respond to subject line commands: “help” “group” “list RE” where RE is a regexp - mail2news group list replies may leave out many groups actually supported - remailers can barf when too many email headers accumulate - you can abuse open smtp relays to forward mail by checking abuse watch sites, faq explains this (people were probably asking about it, crackers hide this way) part 5 explains remailers’ stats pages part 6: - learn pgp - major remailer clients included quicksilver (windows) and mixmaster (cross-platform) - i searched the list. a newer remailer is yamn (golang): https://sec3.net/yamnhelp/ https://github.com/crooks/yamn crook is his last name. also omnimix on windows: https://www.danner-net.de/om.htm . there’s a newer mixmaster (last update 2021) too: https://github.com/merkinmuffley/mixmaster4096 part 7 - nym servers let you send with a name and reply-to address by registering with them - nym servers don’t need to know who you are. - nym commands must begin with “Config:” - you can configure a nym server to send replies to alt.anonymous.messages - the replies encrypt information to your private key for identification [3] - remember to rotate all keys regularly - usage problems are usually from broken material: nonresponding remailers, nonworking reply blocks. verify each part of config. part 8 - delay time can be set with Latent-Time: +0:00 - sometimes it can take days for a message to go through, but usually this is due to understandable/comprehensible network details - messages can also be dropped for a number of reasons [4] 1: ============ :: Anon-To: news.reporter@nbc.com Latent-Time: +0:00 ## Subject: My Company Dumps Toxic Waste I'm writing this anonymously because I don't want to lose my job. My company has, for the past three years... ============ The above message is cut and paste into PGP and encrypted with the chosen remailer's key, say gretchen@neuropa.net ============ -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: PGP 2.6x hQCMA8asoPEC0e2BAQP9GqR2aXNOstRq8eJW2QVubioR0gO7Ue0AOL/rFdnxXknC YPpe2X2TKlcvd961+lhe9w2Y8vo3JcBYYBifTJRwmMjnXLagCU4Mhh0VZtk/QXMZ /FLeJWi67qsb45a2mNw0/Q8eXHKfOQyHcmEQ7cg/bq4Xz6LusfxBHF8zsojVOgal 8RVRtr9drjBlOzJvWxaq7LrKidME6q0tM7pRiLN5dvVBon2NKlmpJI6vAFjyi8ma f5Bg6Zor+PMxcm3EmuWbjLEiOu5USrTgU4OiaC7PHF9INxwXuKmdNz/JprgOc0c6 6s6RvbOo6rsvlwqPKw== =ICz/ -----END PGP MESSAGE----- ============= Finally, the user has to append a directive to the top of the encrypted message, making it look like this: ============ :: Encrypted: PGP -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: PGP 2.6x hQCMA8asoPEC0e2BAQP9GqR2aXNOstRq8eJW2QVubioR0gO7Ue0AOL/rFdnxXknC YPpe2X2TKlcvd961+lhe9w2Y8vo3JcBYYBifTJRwmMjnXLagCU4Mhh0VZtk/QXMZ /FLeJWi67qsb45a2mNw0/Q8eXHKfOQyHcmEQ7cg/bq4Xz6LusfxBHF8zsojVOgal 8RVRtr9drjBlOzJvWxaq7LrKidME6q0tM7pRiLN5dvVBon2NKlmpJI6vAFjyi8ma f5Bg6Zor+PMxcm3EmuWbjLEiOu5USrTgU4OiaC7PHF9INxwXuKmdNz/JprgOc0c6 6s6RvbOo6rsvlwqPKw== =ICz/ -----END PGP MESSAGE----- ============ The user then mails the above encrypted message (double colons and all) NOT to the intended recipient but instead to the remailer's address: . This arrives at the remailer where it is eventually processed, decrypted and mailed to appearing to have come from "Anonymous" . 2: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Anonymous wrote: [SNIP]

Now I want to use a chain of remailers? How do I do this? I'm guessing I should somehow encrypt the message using all the keys of the remailers in the chain? And if I send the message to the first remailer in the chain, how do I let that remailer know to send it to the next one? If someone could either tell me how to do this, or direct me toward an information source explaining this, I'd appreciate it.

Chaining messages is achieved by repeating the encryption steps. Taken as an example, chaining through two remailers thus, You -> A -> B -> Recipient You start off with your message and prefix with :: Anon-To: ## Subject: <some text> <MESSAGE> You then encrypt this with the key of the remailer B, and prefix it with :: Anon-To: :: Encrypted: PGP <PGP MESSAGE> You take this and encrypt it with the key of remailer A, and prefix with :: Encrypted: PGP and now send it to remailer A. What happens then is that remailer A takes the message, decodes it, and sends it to remailer B. Remailer B decodes it and sends it to the recipient. Doc. - -- The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it. ~ Phineas Taylor Barnum. http://vmsbox.cjb.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBO3By8sriC3SGiziTAQH4Cwf+JSwjLQcPtVbNAOKB28NBdA+yLLWYflmB bjpH3nzDyV0TUEEiRH7gdancM8CuMk4n+5D+hWCHIyFoaR93/BuGdft9s8xuPi8M nzSzPO4pFht8NTzhkkrn9iUcJWgh+fFNfBvWtjDCLs6qdxoQwTUI9N0ioceAlK1S vk78pYdZ9srxCEr5sCyuAR56wRq0Sa81SDePOcYz48FrRR51Zdoe/cu3Hu4AYeY5 wpC5J59U0BIVb9xnt9zBR7I3aQZArFffZ2G6vdEHDnVulY5hpXjenEgUCUjFH+da bCD6dCOVtPxYvFbo9mmMY6spiDwfeaOXzniFdFvqdrbADycW2s7qiw== =3VgO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 3: According to the Reliable User's Manual, the "random" strings of numbers and letters which appear in the "Subject:" line are encrypted MD5 hashes of the final "Subject:" line. That is, the remailer client calculates an MD5 hash from the "Subject:" line(which might be, e.g., "ATTN: Dave") in the final or hash headers (below the "##"). This MD5 hash that results from this calculation is likely to be unique to that particular "Subject:" line. The remailer client then encrypts the MD5 hash using conventional (symmetric) encryption, specifically IDEA. The encryption and decryption key is the passphrase given for the "Encrypt-Subject:" directive. 4: Subject: [FAQ 8.2] Why didn't my email/post make it through? + Your message may have just been lost in the network for any number of reasons. It does happen. The system isn't 100% reliable. + You are using broken chains or stale remailer keys. + Your source address or domain is being blocked by the first remailer in your chain. + Your destination address, domain, or newsgroup is being blocked by the last remailer in your chain. + The Usenet group you are posting to is not available on the news server or gateway being used by the last remailer in your chain. + You are trying to crosspost to too many newsgroups and the final remailer in your chain discarded the message. Send a blank email to the remailer with 'remailer-conf' as the subject to determine how many newsgroups the remailer allows you to cross-post to. Spammers abuse the cross posting option so operators are cutting back to 3 or 4 cross posts to deter the spammers. + You have too many addresses in the To, Cc, or Bcc headers and the final remailer in your chain discarded the message. + You attempted to send an anonymous message to a nym that is configured to either reject Bcc messages (directive +nobcc) or not accept any mail at all. + Your e-mail recipient is filtering out messages from anonymous remailers. + You are simply having a bad day. 'Better luck tomorrow! RProcess, the author of JBN2 and the Reliable Remailer, has systematically examined why so many anon messages seem to disappear. His conclusions [http://www.bigfoot.com/~potatoware/PSKB-035.html] are quite provocative.