From: Karl Barrus <elee9sf@Menudo.UH.EDU>
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 10:08:40 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: double messages
Message-ID: <199302231807.AA28212@Menudo.UH.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Cypherpunks,

This double & unexpected message problem reminds me of the problems I
had when I attempted to chain pax and penet together.  But that
resulted in unexpected userids, not duplicate messages.  And if an
unexpected userid occured, then it would show in the message to
cypherpunks from penet, assuming an5877 would say that that isn't his
normal pseudonym.

From what I understand, if someone does not have a penet id and uses
penet to send to this list, that someone will be allocated a penet id,
and allocation will be sent back to the original sender.  Then, mail
to penet with the remailing request to this list will show up as
originating from the pseudonym established.  So how in the world is
Chael's remailer getting hold of the messages and forwarding them to
this list?

I know a few times in the past I've received mail addressed to me and
the list (cc: cypherpunks@toad.com) and I've replied without noticing
the cc: header, so my reply showed up in both places (now I try to
look for the carbon copy header and delete it out!).  But an5877 says
that the header only contains the header he specified.

Now Chael wrote the remailer software himself (is this true?) and I
think he said there were several remailing request specifiers, one of
which is X-Anon-To: user@host - the same one penet uses.

So maybe an5877 is replying to messages with this header:

To: anon@anon.penet.fi
X-Anon-To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Cc: nowhere@bsu-cs.cs.edu

(If the header were this obvious, then I'm sure an5877 would catch it.
But sometimes extra stuff shows in the header, like message id's, etc.
so the cc: is hidden a bit)  Then, the nowhere remailer would
dutifully resend the message as instructed in the X-Anon-To: header.
Of course, to get the cc: nowhere@bsu in the header in the first place
would indicate that an5877 did try to use it at some point - for the
original message?

Well, its a bit far-fetched, but it does explain what is going on.

/-----------------------------------\
| Karl L. Barrus                    |
| elee9sf@menudo.uh.edu             | <- preferred address
| barrus@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTMail) |
\-----------------------------------/