Re: Remailers not heard from; info?

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 10:41 PM 2/19/96, Alex Strasheim wrote:
>
>o   Depending on a remailer to strip your sig doesn't give you security wrt
>the remailer operator.  If you use encryption, the last remailer on the
>chain will see your sig, which will be in the innermost encrypted block.
>That defeats the purpose of chaining.  If you're not using encryption, you
>don't have any security anyay.

Exactly.

Further, in an earlier message Bruce Baugh asked why some remailers did not
more promptly remail their messages. Bruce, you need to look at Raph
Levien's statistics on remailers, inclduding batching/latency: rapid
responses tend to defeat the traffic analysis features of remailers!

Also, preserving subject lines through remailings, another feature Bruce is
requesting, is kind of like barium-tagging one's messages! Why use remailer
chains if the messages are tagged all the way through?

(There are wrinkles that work, such as adding a subject line based on stuff
stored inside the encrypted block a remailer opens for furhter processing.
The nth remailer can add a suject line that may be different for every hop,
or only added near or at the end of the remailings...)

Those who want more "user-friendly" remailer features would do well to
think about what the properties of an "ideal mix" are.


>A better solution might be a specialized remailer that strips sigs for
>people who need the service.  People who need sig stripping could put
>that remailer in the chain, and the rest of us could handle our sigs on
>our own.

And for "casual-grade remailing," where no encryption is used and where
minimal other mix features are used, there are Web pages that will send
simple messages through a user-selectable remailer
(http://www.c2.org:80/remail/by-www.html).

This Web remailer will _not_ automatically add a .sig, as it is not a mail
program per se, and the only text that is remailed is what is entered into
the on-screen window.

--Tim May

Boycott espionage-enabled software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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