An easy-to-reply anonymous mail scheme

[yanek@novavax.nova.edu (Yanek Martinson)]

> >is this: Just include a public key in your post.  And ask any repliers to 
> >post to the newsgroup, encrypted with that key.  No-one else but you can 
> >decrypt the reply, and no-one can know that you did, since everyone receives
> 
> all of my own and everybody elses schemes is that it requires an INVOLVED
> replier.  I need some way that I can send out an anonymous email, and have
> the receiver of that email just hit "r" to reply to me.  If they have

Ok, if that is what you want, then the following procedure will let you
do exactly that: post anonymously, with a reply address that people can
just 'r' to. And no-one (not even the host that is handling the replies)
has to know who you are.  

There exists a site, lets call it remailer.com.  It watches the newsgroup
alt.key.announce for messages with the "Subject: remailer public key notice"
that contain a public key.  It takes each public key, and perofmrs some
sort of hash function on it, tcreate a short "key id". (note: the hash
function must be cryptographically strong, i.e. it should be very difficult
to construct another key with the same hash value). It stores hash and the
key in a database.  Then whenever it receives a mail message
to reply.HASH (where HASH is the key id), it encrypts the message with the 
associated public key, destroys the plaintext message, and posts the ciphertext
to alt.w.a.s.t.e.

So to use this, you would generate a public/private key pair, and compute the
hash function of the public part.  Anonymously post the public key to
alt.key.announce, and then send your message by whatever means you like (anon
mail, anon post to a regular newsgroup, anything) using reply.HASH@remailer.com
as your return address.  Then watch alt.w.a.s.t.e for replies and decrypt
as received... 

All the recipient(s) have to do is press 'r' key and type the answer.

You are guaranteed anonymity because no-one can find out who decrypted
the alt.w.a.s.t.e message, since everyone received it.

All you need is a good way to anonymously post to a newsgroup.

--
Yanek Martinson    mthvax.cs.miami.edu!safe0!yanek     uunet!medexam!yanek
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