Re: Novel use of Usenet and remailers to mailbomb from luzskru@cpcnet.com

[jpb@miamisci.org (Joe Block)]

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Bear with me - original text follows all these quotes

At 2:29 PM1/13/96, bryce wrote:
>> If "digital postage" is ever implemented, this sort of
>> distributed-origin mailbomb-through-a-remailer would be stopped
>> immediately.  All the messages that the horny net geeks send would
>> necessarily contain the same postage stamp, and the remailer would
>> notice this right away -- and throw away messages containing the used
>> postage stamp.
>>
>> One more motivation for e$-like digital postage for remailers.
>
>
>Unfortunately this is not the case.  The perpetrator would
>simply have to convince the horny net geeks to pay their own
>postage.  In fact, it is *in general* impossible to have both
>anonymity and prevention/control of mail-bombing.  Of course
>digital postage will help the problem somewhat by making the
>bombers pay for it, and smarter filters on the recipient's end
>will help, but in general it is a problem we are going to have
>to live with if we want anonymity.

Impossible is an awfully strong word.

If I was going to implement free digital stamps, I'd have a autoreply
daemon (stamps@remailer.com) that when sent a mail, would respond with X
number of valid stamps.  If you're going to trust me not to log my remailer
traffic, extending that trust to believing I won't log the stamp requests
shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

Alternatively, the stamp could consist of a unique-id, any unique-id,
working identically to Usenet message ids.  That way, the user can generate
his own stamps without being forced to trust the remailer operator not to
log them.

I prefer the second option as it has both greater anonymity and allows for
simple history file patching to the remailer.

Either way, if the stamps/message-ids are forced to be inside the encrypted
address block, mail-bombers can only get one message through.  Even if the
HNGs are instructed to add a stamp and re-encrypt the address block, when
the spam-o-grams start getting routed through the pre-packaged route,
they'll be stopped dead after one message gets through.

Joseph Block <jpb@miamisci.org>

"We can't be so fixated on our desire
 to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..."
 -- Bill Clinton  (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)
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