Anonymous Servers - Attn: Stray Cat, Alex de Joode; hacktic remailer

Author

Attn: Stray Cat, Alex de Joode; hacktic remailer

Thomas J. Boschloo

2006-10-25, 1:23 pm

There used to be a remailer usura/@/xs4all.nl. I wonder if you or
anybody else knows what was used for an exit? Would smtp.xs4all.nl get
the admins of XS4ALL breathing in the neck of the remop? What if the
remailer was middleman?

I think widow/@/wol.be was the only other remailer hosted at a normal
ISP email account.

Just how does this work (aside from the POP3 being handled by the ISP
without TLS or SSL)?

TIA,
Thomas
--
"Give me what i need, or i take what i want"
Hanin Elias - Wanting a machine

Alex de Joode

2006-10-25, 1:23 pm

Thomas J. Boschloo <nospam@hccnet.nl> wrote:
: There used to be a remailer usura/@/xs4all.nl. I wonder if you or
: anybody else knows what was used for an exit? Would smtp.xs4all.nl get
: the admins of XS4ALL breathing in the neck of the remop? What if the
: remailer was middleman?

That's a long time ago autum 1994 orso.

I bought my first computer in 1988 and the first software I bought
was PC Tools. The manual had this intreguing notice that stated
that only US people would get the 128 bits DES encryption europeans
and others were limited to 56 bits encryption.

I felt cheated, they gave me a lesser product. So I placed an ad
in PC Magazine (http://www.pcmagazine.nl/) and asked for the 128 bits
version. One evening the phone rang, 'Does your father work for the
gouvernment' a male asked. 'No' I replied. He then told me he rang from
prison and he would sent me the disk if I mailed him two blanc disks.
Which I did, and so my interest in encryption software started (and my
collection btw).

The arrival of a modem was an other improvement for expanding my
collection. Previously I bought disk from companies that advertised
in UK computer magazines, but that was expensive. A company in Baarn
had an offer for a 14K4 modem for 180 guilders (if I remember correctly)
(~90 euros) which was quite cheap for those days, so I bought one.

BBS's connected to FIDOnet were the main way for communicating those
days and the sysop of my favourite BBS 'Reflex BBS' did not mind if
I requested (encryption) programmes via his connection. If you spent
enought time online you eventually come by BBS's of the HPAV scene,
of which Utopia(Hacktic) was the most interesting. It also offered
access to internet email, which previously only was available via
a clutch at 'The Owls BBS' which had a for pay telephone number. It
took some time to get uucp to work (WAFFLE on msdos !) but eventually
it did and my node vox.hacktic.nl was born.

A friend wrote a remailer programme for Waffle so I decided to try it
out, and it went life in May 1994.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp...17?dmode=source

As the turn around time was quite large (I did poll only twice a day, first time
at 17:59 since everybody else dailed in at 18:00 because of the cheaper tarrif,
and once after 21:00 when I've read all my mail en newsgroups) I asked XS4ALL if
I could run one 'online' on my shell account. Filipe said 'fine' so usura@xs4all.nl
was started as a remailer. (Thanks to Matt Ghio, whatever happend to him, for playing
helpdesk)

As the remailer became more popular (due to the fast turnaround time) Cor Bosman wanted
to get rid of the remailer as it was responsable for most of the resources at the shell
machine, Felipe and I bought a seperate computer to host the remailer(s) and host an
ftp site for my encryption archives. Thus usura@xs4all.nl/replay.com went away and split
into remailer@utopia.hacktic.nl and remailer@replay.com. The utopia remailer was run by
Hacktic (and went away after scientology started to harass people) and replay.com went
away when it changed domain into dizum.com.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt....5d?dmode=source

: Just how does this work (aside from the POP3 being handled by the ISP
: without TLS or SSL)?

No pop, just plain smtp and the mail was processed via a procmail script and either
spooled in my home directory or sent to mtp.xs4all.nl for delivery. TLS/SSL wasn't
there yet.

Cheers,
-aj-

Thomas J. Boschloo

2006-10-25, 1:23 pm

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Alex de Joode schreef:
[snip]
> Cheers,
> -aj-

Cheers to you too! That was some impressive history lesson which would
have fitted well within the Hacktic Magazine ;-)

I know next to nothing about POP3/IMAP/SMTP apart from that Sendmail and
Mercury are most commonly used for that at remailers.

I notice that most remailers that don't have they own domain plus IP end
up being dead. I figure this is because of TOS issues with their provider.

Would it be possible to POP3 at e.g. bigfoot like Frog-Admin did and
then SMTP with your own provider's SMTP server given that you run
middle? Less servers running on your remailer box means less doors that
can be opened from the outside after all..

BTW, COPYIIPC was the program I loved most until UNP 4.11 came along :-)
[and NOKEY.COM, that was great too!]

Highest Regards,
Thomas
- --
"Give me what i need, or i take what i want"
Hanin Elias - Wanting a machine
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