From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 95 09:58:34 PDT
To: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Commercial Mixmaster
In-Reply-To: <199509170348.XAA06314@bwh.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <199509171656.MAA27949@frankenstein.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Adam Shostack writes:
> 	Its worth noting that the source code to Julf's Penet remailer
> is not public (AFAIK).  People use it becuase they trust Julf, or
> trust people who trust Julf.

Yeah, but remember -- there is very little that Julf's code could do
to "cheat". Julf's system maintains a mapping of users to aliases
anyway, so he has no need to "pervert" the system -- he can do
all the bad things we worry about with it working correctly. We
therefore need not see the code to trust the system, because the only
way that the system is trustworthy is if Julf is trustworthy.

Other systems based on cryptography might not be in this position.

Perry