Re: Message pools _are_ in use today!

[daw@cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)]

In article <adfab86806021004c248@[205.199.118.202]>,
Timothy C. May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
> The newsgroup "alt.anonymous.messages" has existed for a year or two, and
> serves to be working reasonably well as a message pool. Check it out.

alt.anonymous.messages is not an ideal message pool-- it is a hack.
(Granted, it *is* a really cool, clever, and practically useful hack.)

Ian and I talked about this at some length.  alt.anonymous.messages
has certain unfortunate shortcomings.


Someone sniffing the Berkeley 'net can tell when I receive an
alt.anonymous.messages message by when I download an article from
the NNTP server; they can tell when I send such an article by when
I upload an article to the NNTP server; they can list all the
``subversive'' Berkeley folks who have read alt.anonymous.messages
lately.

The local NNTP server must be trusted.

Furthermore, even if you run a trusted NNTP server on your local
machine, there are still vulnerabilities.  Someone sniffing on your
subnet can tell when you inject a new message onto alt.anonymous.messages,
as can your neighboring NNTP servers.

Then there are all the standard message length and timing threats
from traffic analysis.  And there is no perfect forward secrecy
when using alpha nymservers to redirect email to alt.anonymous.messages.

There are also second-order threats, arising from the fact that
an attacker can selectively and remotely delete messages from some
spools by using cancel messages, without compromising any NNTP servers.


Ian's post detailed a proposal for implementing a message pool with
better security properties: link encryption, constant size messages,
randomized flooding, perfect forward secrecy, etc.

This mechanism is intended to provide recipient anonymity.  Sender
anonymity must still be achieved by standard chaining methods.


If folks have better ideas for how to achieve really good recipient
anonymity, I hope they'll speak up!

Take care,
-- Dave