From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 16:06:14 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Anonymous virtual networks
Message-ID: <199707190801.KAA17825@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



What if people were to create virtual machines (eg Java or whatever) which
were accessible to anyone on the internet, and linked them together in a
virtual network.  CPU-time and bandwidth on the virtual machines could then
be sold (or more likely bartered).

The network would be self-contained, so nobody outside the virtual network
would see it.

So, when one wants to send some anonymous messages, just buy or trade for
some processor time and disk space somewhere, then mail in a remailer
program and it'll run.  When it runs out of cpu-time credits, it just gets
deleted.  (The machine owner would have little reason to keep it around,
since it is more economically profitable to lease the disk space to
someone else rather than try to decrypt old remailer traffic, which would
likely be a futile effort, given enough layers of encryption)

So let's say we agree I'll give you 10 mips-years of cpu and 10 MB disk
space and 100 MB of network traffic on my machine, and you give me the same
on your computer.  I then trade some of the CPU time & disk space on your
machine to Joe, who uses it to set up some remailers.  Joe then sells
remailer services to some newbies.  After their pre-paid remailer cards run
out then Joe's remailer has used up all his CPU-credits on your machine and
the remailer (and the evidence) disappears.  Your computer just deletes the
files and you never know about Joe or his anonymous message service.
Pretty good anonymity. :-)

Of course, in order to prevent certain obvious harassment attacks, the
virtual network would need to remain self-contained, so people would need
their own virtual-network/virtual-computer clients to access their
anonymous mail.  They'd probably even need to sell their cpu-cycles to key
crackers in order to pay for their email service. ;-)