From: "Wei Dai" <weidai@eskimo.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 95 17:50:02 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RE: a new way to do anonymity
Message-ID: <199502100149.AA28876@mail.eskimo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Eric Hughes wrote:

> Now here's an important detail that needs to get done right.  Is the
> forwarding for fixed length packets, variable length packets, or
> streams?  Is this decision global or local?  What are the latency and
> aggregatation effects?  How important are these for different classes
> of data?  (telnet v. voice, e.g.)

I'm not sure I understand the first question.  My idea was originally 
based on link encrypted streams.  How can forwarding variable length 
packets help untracibility?  Wouldn't an attacker just have to match 
up the sizes of incoming and outgoing packets?  Forwarding fixed 
length packets, on the other hands, just makes the system a 
remailer-net (so you'll have to do mixing, etc.).  What am I 
misunderstanding here?

> I'd suggest just getting something running first, to get some
> prototyping experience.

I just finished hacking ESM to do link encryption.  (see my 
other post)  Now if someone is willing to run a MUD type program and 
hook LESM up with it, then we'd have the first prototype of a 
pipe-net.

Wei Dai


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBLzrFzzl0sXKgdnV5AQFfOAP7BpGWmo7FLK02a10NVTfgLEeheBosazzz
0TbFs2dwhtL4IRtY6To25e7MN2cz4X+qKJOleWy6uGbUowygHKbd1uiHOS9DNRmx
/fKeyIlGd/Ogv6hSpiL/JDd0vx7vVx9Ho1CIy+oAFq4v8Kwd0sqQenqqvhBdoEfA
zmVUpc+82nU=
=3mfe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

E-mail: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>   URL: "http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai"
=================== Exponential Increase of Complexity ===================
--> singularity --> atoms --> macromolecules --> biological evolution
--> central nervous systems --> symbolic communication --> homo sapiens
--> digital computers --> internetworking --> close-coupled automation
--> broadband brain-to-net connections --> artificial intelligence
--> distributed consciousness --> group minds --> ? ? ?