[freehaven-dev] mixnet thoughts

[Joseph Sokol-Margolis <seph@MIT.EDU>]

more mixnet thoughts, but first...
at the last meeting, brian referenced cordelia's de-anonimizing
protocol. I believe the correct url for it is:
http://web.mit.edu/seph/anon/cordelia-deanon
have fun.

I brought up the possibility of a remailer net where the remailer
names expired and changed. This doesn't work against an attacker who
can take a snapshot of everything. I'm still pondering how to
effectively expire addresses though.

brian proposed the mixnet that we've dubbed the alien conspiracy
mixnet, as it reminds us of the guild game by that name. I think it
has a chance at working, though it's a little too complicated to
easily visualize all the ramifications. (perhaps a downside right
there) 

The idea, is that the ending mixnet is a lattice of nodes, with
addresses such that nodes near each other have the same address, and
nodes far apart have dissimilar addresses. That way, I can address a
packet to a neighborhood (an address fragment) and it should be able
to traverse the path that takes it closer to that neighborhood. when
it get's to an area with no clear way to go, it random walks. 

setting up this lattice is reasonably hard though. the basic for of
this was that each node has an "address" associated with it. that
address is made up of n fields. The node picks random values for said
fields, this is it's address. Now the node "reaches out" and
establishes contacts with it's neighbors, once it does so, it
exchanges a fragment of it's address with those around it, and picks a
random value to swap in for one of it's.

I feel like it might work, but that someone (does not volenteer)
should model the lattice, and see what happens with different values
for the various aspects.

seph