[Remops] Remailer Facelift

[Cypher]

Just to make things a bit clearer and remove any ambiguity from anyone's 
mind, let me make a few statements to augment Crypto's post:

1. We are /not/ making any changes to Mixmaster or the way it operates 
at this time. All functionality we'll be testing will be /outside/ of 
Mixmaster.

2. The introduction of inter-remailer 4096 bit encrypted communications 
will be done in a simple way: we're going to pipe all remailer mail to a 
script, encrypt it properly for the next remailer, then have Mixmaster 
process it for delivery. The script will be available on a public GitHub 
repo that I'll announce as soon as it's set up.

3. Delivery will be done as it is now by Postfix/Sendmail except the 
connections between SMTP servers will be /encrypted/ using an SSH 
connection. This is a rehash of a concept originally developed by Crypto 
and Matt Ghio in the 1990's. The information on how to do this yourself 
can be obtained from the documentation on port forwarding on the SSH man 
page. We'll also provide documentation on how to easily set up SSH 
connections between remailers. YMMV.

4. Anyone choosing to run this hack will not be required to change their 
Mixmaster configuration file or recompile the software. Everything will 
be /external/ to Mixmaster. This is more of a 'bandaid fix' to test a 
few concepts prior to our first release of the next Mixmaster which will 
incorporate these changes.

5. We are going to be using 2 remailers (ringo, neutron) instead of 3 as 
we'd originally said. Once things are stable, we'll add Smelly just to 
find what the process of adding a remailer to determine the exact 
process for adding a new remailer and work out any kinks.

Just wanted to clarify things for anyone wondering.

Thanks,
Cypher


On 04/24/2014 07:04 PM, Crypto wrote:
> 
> Hello Everyone!
> 
> Phase 1: We have opted not to modify Mixmaster at this point but we 
> have
> elected to improve on how remailers inter-communicate. These
> modifications may be incorporated into our new release of Mixmaster.
> 
> 1. Smelly, Ringo, and Neutron will be put into test mode. The first 
> test
> is that these three remailers will be exchanging messages via 4096-bit
> keys. What does this buy us? The current remailer code will NOT require
> everyone to up update to a new client. Inter-remailer transactions will
> be handled with 4096-bit keys with submissions using the current 
> clients.
> 
> 2. Smelly, Ringo, and Neutron will additionally be tied together via
> persistent SSH connections. Instead of communication on port 25 the
> three remailers will communicate via SSH for additional security on
> ports that will not be published.
> 
> The lead engineer on this is myself with Cypher as the lead/senior
> programmer.
> 
> Please advise as to any thoughts or suggestions.
> 
> 
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