From: futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex)
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 09:54:36 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: alt.anonymous.messages considered harmful
In-Reply-To: <199511021625.RAA17800@utopia.hacktic.nl>
Message-ID: <199511022113.QAA23862@opine.cs.umass.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Name Withheld by Request writes:
[re: problems with the Usenet newsgroup model of pseud/anonymous message pools]
> Denial of service attacks could be made somewhat less feasible by
> making the pool accessible as a mailing list and via http.

Mailing lists of course suffer the problem of strictly limited participation.
The web approach might work better, in some future with better privacy-
protecting infrastructure in place. Specifically, if HTTP transactions with
a popular web server were routinely encrypted, then all reasonably long
visits to that site would act as cover traffic for a message pool on that
server. As a bonus, you could have a spiffy form on the web page that
searches the pool for you. 

In any event, the server could log your exploration. This returns us to the
issue of strongly anonymous web proxies. (And we could imagine 
countermeasures, like daemons that search for randomly selected pseudonym tags
to muddy the waters. As Tim might say, lots of issues.)

Also, the mention of "as a mailing list _and_ via http" is significant. Making 
the pool available in multiple forms seems to be an unconditional benefit.

-Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>