ANON: Re: how does it work

[Karl Barrus <elee9sf@Menudo.UH.EDU>]

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> As an aside, all this talk about anonymous remailers is intriguing.
> Does anyone know with certainty what happens at the remailer site,
> within the software process of stripping headers and the likes, where
> the original sender of the message could be tracked? SENDMAIL logs,
> etc.?

Well, I recently checked the syslog file (found in /usr/spool/mqueue)
on rosebud, and it contains entries like this:

Aug  7 17:40:17 rosebud sendmail[24780]: AA24780: from=elee7h5,
size=6544, class=0
Aug  7 17:40:19 rosebud sendmail[24781]: AA24780: to=[deleted]
delay=00 :00:02, stat=Sent, mailer=tcp, host=[deleted]
Aug  8 10:19:41 rosebud sendmail[24816]: AA24816: message-id=<[deleted]>
Aug  8 10:19:41 rosebud sendmail[24816]: AA24816: from=<[deleted]>, 
size=618, class=0
Aug  8 10:19:41 rosebud sendmail[24817]: AA24816: 
to="|/users/emlab/elee7h5/remail/slocal.pl", delay=00:00:01, 
stat=Sent, mailer=prog, host= 

(I deleted out the addresses that were actually there.)
Unfortunately, I can't erase the syslog file or turn sendmail logging
off.

Some things that would help foil traffic analysis would be to file all
incoming mail in a directory, and then mail it out randomly in the
early hours of the morning.  Or, hop your mail around a bit more.

> What would be preferrable, in ideal scenario, would be that all traces
> of the incoming message was discarded altogether. In this fashion, the
> operator of the remailer would be less likely to be "persuaded" to
> divulge the originator(s) of messages, if found in such a precarious
> position.

Ah, I have some bad and good news about my remailer
elee7h5@rosebud.ee.uh.edu.  A friend has loaned me his account, and in
the course of setting up a remailer which uses RIPEM instead of PGP
(some folks have requested this - and it should be up RSN :-), I tried
to log into my account to fix the sendmail invocation option to -oi
and recompile perl to include flock() support.  I found my password
had been locked!

Actually, I've been expecting this to happen - you see, I'm through
with UH and am going to Rice from now on.  Rosebud is a workstation in
the grad group I used to be in, and since I'm no longer a student, I
figured this would happen sooner or later.  BUT, it is a precedent
that old student's directories are kept around, with logins disabled.
I've tested the remailer, and it still responds, so hopefully it will
run quietly for many more months/years :-)

That was the bad news: I can't log into it to fix things, or check
bounced mail, etc.  But this is good news as well: bounces and errors
are dropped, the remailer works automatically and I can't disable it
:-) In fact, I have a pretty good excuse if ever somebody "abuses" the
remailer... I can't do anything about it, heh :-)



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