From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh@efga.org>
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 11:35:40 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Traffic Analysis
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19971002232810.03514efc@rboc.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



I'm curious about traffic analysis capability.  While I don't know the
exact figures involved, I'd say that Cracker throws away about 10% of the
messages it receives.  Admittedly, these are probably not encrypted
messages (I don't know.  Humans do not get to read the messages.)  Does
this make traffic analysis more difficult?

On the other side, if Cracker were to send out more messages that it takes
in, or just replace these thrown away messages with random noise messages,
perhaps encrypted, would this foil traffic analysis?

Or suppose Redneck sent each nym an encrypted message each day, or more
often?  This would be a pure nonsense message just sent out to foil traffic
analysis.  Since the server generated the nonsense message internally,
there would be no matching incoming message for Redneck.


  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key