From: nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Chael Hall)
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 93 12:36:23 PDT
To: mccoy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Jim McCoy)
Subject: Re: REMAIL: X-Discard header line added
In-Reply-To: <199306151642.AA07985@tramp.cc.utexas.edu>
Message-ID: <9306151939.AA13767@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>will not deter traffic analysis in the slightest.  Headers are always
>unencrypted, so anyone watching the flow will be able to write a 3 line
>perl script to filter out all of these messages and there is nothing a
>header line can do to hide this discard information.  

     Eric has already addressed this; I intend to make my remailer PGP
capable soon.  If not the one on bsu-cs, the new one will have PGP as
soon as I can get to it.

>paranoid).  This would make traffic analysis much harder because once the
>message enters the remailer system it bounces around so much; the remailers
>become a black box that deliver the message without really knowing anythign
>about it until the last phase of delivery.

     I'm not sure what you mean about bouncing it around to different
remailers, because if there are a lot of remailers, it could take a long
time before it finally gets to the appropriate one that can decrypt the
destination information (perhaps longer than the TTL and therefore it does
not get delivered).  With encryption, the remailers don't have to know the
recipient until the last phase anyway.  In addition, they may not know the
contents of the message either.

>This would also not waste bandwidth moving useless messages around.

     Right now, we have plenty of bandwidth because the remailers don't
get much use.

     ALL:  Which is better:  X-Discard or X-TTL?  I can easily change it
to X-TTL.

Chael

--
Chael Hall
nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu, 00CCHALL@BSUVC.BSU.EDU, chall@bsu.edu
(317) 776-4000 from 8 am - 5 pm CST