Re: Details on return envelopes (padding)

[Eric Messick <eric@parallax.com>]

Hal writes:
> I did spot one possible problem.  Remailer &V sends to &W an address
> field that looks like:
> 
> Addr: w(B), w(Sw, Qw, C, &X, x(C), x(...), pad)
> 
> but I don't think &V has enough information to create the 2nd item here.
> The reason for the A, B, etc. keys is, I think, to allow new padding to
> be done as the message gets passed between each pair of remailers.
> I think that may need to be used here as well.  &V can't put padding into
> the w(Sw,...) block.

It may not be at all obvious or intuitive, but &V *CAN* put padding
into the w(...) block.  I'm no longer trying to do this (see my
previous posting), but it could still be useful in some situations, so
I'll try to explain it more clearly.

PGP uses binary structures for all of this, but I'm going to pretend
that it's all ascii, just so we can see what's going on easier.  That
block w(...) looks something like this:

CTB: RSA			<-- that's *C*ypher *T*ype *B*yte
Length: 12345 bytes
Key_ID: w
IDEA_key: RSA(w, random_key)
CTB: IDEA
Length: 12315
	<random initialization bytes and cypher check>
	CTB: Plain Text
	Length: 12300
	Here we have 12300 characters.  Note that all of the lines
	that are indented are encrypted with random_key using
	the IDEA cypher.
	...End of the encrypted text.


To add padding to this, simply append some cryptographically strong
random bytes to the end, and adjust the unencrypted lengths by that
much.  No one can tell that your new bogus lengths don't match the
length on the plaintext packet without actually being able to see the
plaintext packet length field.  The decryptor believes the plaintext
packet length, and automatically throws away the bogus bytes that were
decrypted.

While writing this, I realized that when I tested this, I may have
only changed the outermost length.  It is possible (but I think it is
highly unlikely) that PGP would get sick if you changed the second
length value.  Since I no longer need to do this, I don't have any
incentive to check this out again.  It's not that difficult, but I
hate editing binary files...


-eric messick