[13610] in Cypherpunks
Re: Message Havens
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N)
Fri May 13 11:42:47 1994
From: SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N <sinclai@ecf.toronto.edu>
To: klbarrus@owlnet.rice.edu (Karl Lui Barrus)
Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 06:32:47 -0400
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <9405130432.AA05874@flammulated.owlnet.rice.edu>; from "Karl Lui Barrus" at May 13, 94 12:32 am
> I'm taking it that a "gopherhole" is different than the "message
> haven" I described, so maybe I missed something...
A "gopherhole" and "message haven" are the same thing.
We were using the term "gopherhole" because it was suggested that
gopher be used as the underlying mechanism for a message haven.
> but if the "gopherhole" sends out random messages (and presumably the
> ones you are interested in) then the "gopherhole" will eventually be
> able to figure out what messages you are interested in. And how would
> it know what messages you are interested in unless you tell it... it
> would then need to be able to tie your psuedonym to your real mail
> address, which defeats the entire purpose of what I described. But
> then, maybe the design goal of a "gopherhole" is different and I
> missed it.
Yes. Under this model, a message haven must be trusted.
> Maybe I wasn't clear in what the "message haven" offered... I'm trying
> to get away from the penet style mapping tables, persistent
> information tying you and your pseudonym, and solve the "unsolicited
> anonymous mail" problem. The message haven requires no trust, no
> tables, no information since it just accepts message and files them,
> and if you retrieve all the message, the haven can't figure out which
> ones you are interested in!
This flavour of message haven would not require persistent tables.
A crooked operator /could/ maintain them, but unlike penet they are
not required. Every time you log into a message haven, you tell it
what tags you are interested in. Here the level of trust is similar
to that of a regular remailer. The remailer /could/ keep logs to
destroy your anonymity, but we hope it doesn't.
I realize this solution is far from ideal. But as I posted before,
I don't believe the numbers favour a message haven where everything
is downloaded. I have this nagging feeling that there is some
very elegant cryptographical way of doing this employing secret
sharing, but I can't actually think of how to do it.
