From: loki@obscura.com (Lance Cottrell)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 1996 14:44:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: Mixmaster On A $20 Floppy?
Message-ID: <ad15159e03021004e3e7@[137.110.24.250]>
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The second paragraph of this post seems to address a different issue than
the first. The problem of correlations between a certain sender sending and
a certain receiver receiving, is well known and understood. The best
defense against this (as a sender) is to send messages into the remailer
network with a period equal to or less than the the time required for a
message with your typical chain length to pass through the remailer net. If
these are sent at random intervals, then your real mail will blend with the
cover traffic, and mail from you will correlate with all message receipts
by all message recipients.

The second paragraph seems to deal with the issue of being known as an
anonymous remailer or regular remailer user. I am not sure exactly what the
concern with that is.

        -Lance

At 11:56 PM 1/5/96, Futplex wrote:
>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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----------------------------------------------------------
Lance Cottrell   loki@obscura.com
PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server.
Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available!
http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly
it flips over, pinning you underneath.  At night the ice
weasels come."
                        --Nietzsche
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