From: mixmaster@remail.obscura.com (Mixmaster)
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 10:17:02 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: [NOT NOISE] Jena Remailer
Message-ID: <199609282310.QAA19716@sirius.infonex.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


 wmono@Direct.CA wrote to All:

 w> My appologies in advance to the list for this noise.  Dear Anonymous,
 w> if there is another way to contact you, please let it be known so that
 w> this need not involve the 1500 others on the list.

Noise?  Are you on drugs?  This is one of the relatively few _on-topic_
threads on this damned list these days!

If 1500 other folks can be made to give a try to the Jenaer Remailer
then this thread has served a very useful and salutary purpose.

 >> 4:  Account is automatically established and should work
 >> immediately.

 w> As soon as the mail arrives, that is correct.  If it was lost by using
 w> a non-operational remailer, or by sending a misformatted mail, then it
 w> will not.

I believe this was the problem; several of the remailers were choking
right when I was doing this experiment.  Indeed, I had to post my reply
to you here FOUR times through otherwise reliable remailers before it
ever showed up.

 w> It may be lag, it may not be.  I recommend that you create a test nym,
 w> with minimal anonymity (no remailers, send everything directly to
 w> jena) and, after waiting several hours to ensure that the key was
 w> added, send a mail from your nym to your own account.  If you get no
 w> mail after several hours, something is wrong.

This is mechanically a sound suggestion, but I believe that it is a
primary security measure to avoid any direct contact with fresh remailer,
even using a waste account.

 >>  w> - Never request a delivery to your real Email address.

 >> So here's what I really want to know:  When/if the new account is up
 >> and running, how _does_ one discreetly retrieve his mail?  I don't
 >> see how, other than to have it sent to alt.anonymous.messages via a
 >> mail2news netmail address such as
 >> alt.anonymous.messages@news.demon.co.uk and then pick through the
 >> mess there until some cyphertext message responds to his right key.

 w> That's exactly right.  We need better message pools.  Actually, what
 w> is needed is a email message pool, because of the lag and uncertainly
 w> of Usenet.  But that's a project for another day.

>From a security standpoint, to say nothing of the netmail load, I should
prefer not to use an e-mail pool, but the daunting load of spam and
clueless messages in a.a.m is a nuisance, and you are surely right about
the vagaries of Usenet connectivity.

My first thought was to have them sent to a non-autopinging *.test ng
via a well-tested parsing mail2news gate, but some autopingers ping ALL
*.test traffic passing through a site.  If these ping messages didn't
get automatically bitbucketed at the remailer site, this could be a
problem for the operator.

Anyway, let's see what happens with today's tests...