ZKS Shutdown

[Tolan Blundell]

I used to use freedom, but i kept forgetting my passphrase..lame i know but
hey.

I was wondering if there are any open source projects that perform a similar
function (pseudonym based ip traffic anonymising, and remailing) out there?
I've had a look on google, but i can only find discussions on the theory of
this sort of stuff, rather than any working implementations.

Freedoms product was excellent (as far as i understood, im no security
expert ;) in many ways but the real reason i dumped it was that it was just
too slow on my old 400mhz pc with a 56k modem....

-Tolan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cypherpunks at ssz.com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks at ssz.com]On
Behalf Of Greg Broiles
Sent: 04 October 2001 17:44
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
Subject: CDR: Re: ZKS Shutdown


At 06:20 PM 10/4/2001 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:

>Zero-Knowledge Systems is reported to be shutting down their Freedom
>network and product.  A letter has apparently been sent to subscribers
>with the bad news.  Could someone please post a copy here?  Does it say
>anything about the reasons?  Just lack of money, or something related
>to 9/11?
>
>The web sites have not been updated and are still hyping the new version
>3.0 released just a few weeks ago.

This message appeared on coderpunks a few days ago -

>Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 09:38:15 +0100
>From: Ben Laurie <ben at algroup.co.uk>
>To: David Wagner <daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu>
>Cc: coderpunks at toad.com
>Subject: Re: What are the main Problems of implementing a pipe-net?
>
>David Wagner wrote:
> >
> > Are you aware of the anonymous network that ZKS (Zero Knowledge Systems)
> > has set up?  It has many of the same features as Pipenet.  It does not
> > go to quite the same extremes for anonymity in the face of extremely
> > sophisticated attackers, but they seem to have picked a pretty darn good
> > point in the tradeoff space.  Technically, ZKS seems to be pretty
strong.
>
>They scrapped their affiliate program last week - so I guess that means
>bye-bye network.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Ben.
>
>--
>http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
>
>"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
>doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff

... and I just got a press release from ZKS this morning trumpeting the
virtues of Freedom 3.0; sounds like maybe they're abandoning the network
and shifting their consumer-product focus to software alone. I looked at
their website after seeing Ben's message and was struck by how much they've
shifted away from selling service to consumers at $49 each, and are now
targeting businesses who are allegedly concerned about their customers'
alleged concern about privacy. They did appear to be willing to sell the
consumer software, but it clearly wasn't the focus of their business as
presented by the website.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street
kids