Re: REMAIL: problems

[jthomas@kolanut.mitre.org (Joe Thomas)]

> > 	I've been thinking a little bit about the problems with unreliable
> > remailers.
> 

> I had another suggestion that might be helpful for people that are
> chaining through many remailers, but it would require an addition or two
> to existing remailers.
. . .
> If the remailer knows that the message is going to another remailer, it
> can expect a 'reply' from that remailer once the message has been
> processed (forwarded), say within 48 hours.  Give each message a serial
> number and the remailer a memory...  If the message is not acknowledged
> within the timeout period, it skips a hop and goes to the next remailer
> (or the destination).

This is a serious misfeature.  An essential goal of remailer design is that  
they be stateless.  A message is forwarded, then immediately forgotten.  Any  
historical information about messages that have gone through is a potential  
weakness.  Message serial numbers are a perfect audit trail.

> The problem with this approach is that the remailer must store messages
> locally for up 48 hours (well more if all of the hops were down)...  I
> can't see (as Sameer alluded to) a way to have reliability (which sort of
> implies, especially with the above approach, storage) and secrecy (which
> implies quick and dirty 'less safe' message handling).

Consider cryptographic secret-sharing protocols.  If we have 20 remailers,  
each remailer could split his key into 20 pieces, 15 of which would be  
necessary to reconstruct the key.  When a remailer goes down, the key could  
be reconstructed and given to a substitute remailer.  The system can survive  
the loss of 5 remailers, and would require a collaboration of 15, or 3/4 of  
the remailer operators to intentionally break the security.

Joe
(working on my .sig; I don't speak for MITRE)
--
Joe Thomas <jthomas@kolanut.mitre.org>          Say no to the Wiretap Chip!
PGP key available by request, finger, or pgp-public-keys@toxicwaste.mit.edu
PGP   key   fingerprint:   1E E1 B8 6E 49 67 C4 19  8B F1 E4 9D F0 6D 68 4B