From: futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 1996 16:10:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: Mixmaster On A $20 Floppy?
In-Reply-To: <199601060155.UAA13574@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com>
Message-ID: <199601060756.CAA08977@thor.cs.umass.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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tallpaul writes:
> Weight, under two pounds. Price ~$US250. Capacity 135 Mb formatted. Price
> of spare disks: $US 20. 
> Take it off a computer. Put it in a briefcase. Carry it with you nicely out
> of public view. Hook it up to another machine and .... 
[...]
> Question 2: Anybody want to speculate on what traffic analysis is like when
> encrypted data comes INTO one known Mixmaster site but goes OUT on one or
> more "unknown" or (partially) random Mixmaster sites? 

The "ultimate" traffic analysis problem, as others have observed, is
the correlation between messages sent by A and received by B via the overall
network. Hence the utility of a Dining Cryptographers' Net, PipeNet, etc. in 
which the apparent bandwidth variation between any two points is eliminated. 
A and B are effectively folded into the network.

I suppose that a site that escapes detection as a Mixmaster will throw off
the correlation stats (i.e. because a message from that site to B won't be
identified as a remailed message). But such sites are elusive objects I
think. On the one hand, the site can't endure for long, or else its 
throughput traffic will likely give it away as an anonymizer (i.e. it gets
lots of mail from the Mix network, and sends out similar amounts of mail to
all sorts of people and the network). On the other hand, it had better last,
or else it will look suspicious as a transient account receiving mail from
the Mix network, sending a few messages, and quickly vanishing.  

Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>
"Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!"

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