[ANN] Mixminion 0.0.6rc1

[Nick Mathewson <nickm@freehaven.net>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

==== MIXMINION 0.0.6RC1

The first release candidate of Mixminion 0.0.6 is now available.

This is the one with support for routing by hostname, win32, and other
supposedly desirable things.  Please try it out and let me know whether
it works for you.  If there are no serious problems, I'll put out the final
0.0.6 release later this week.

   Source: http://mixminion.net/dist/Mixminion-0.0.6rc1.tar.gz
Signature: http://mixminion.net/dist/Mixminion-0.0.6rc1.tar.gz.asc
   README: http://mixminion.net/dist/README-0.0.6rc1

For Windows users with Python 2.3:
Installer: http://mixminion.net/dist/Mixminion-0.0.6rc1.win32-py2.3.exe
Signature: http://mixminion.net/dist/Mixminion-0.0.6rc1.win32-py2.3.exe.asc

For Windows users without Python 2.3, or Windows users who want to try
a standalone version:

   Binary: http://mixminion.net/dist/mixminion-v006rc1-win32.zip
Signature: http://mixminion.net/dist/mixminion-v006rc1-win32.zip.asc

==== A NOTE TO WINDOWS USERS (From the README)
   This is the first version of Mixminion to support native Win32 operations.
   As such, you should consider it even more experimental than usual.  If you
   find any bugs, or any places where its behavior is stupid for a Windows
   environment, please let me know.

   Also, if it _does_ work for you, please let me know.  I've only tried it
   on win2k, but it should work on win98 or later.

==== NEW IN VERSION 0.0.6rc1: (From the README)
   - Windows support
       - The Mixminion command-line interface now works on MS Windows, at
         least for me.  It has been tested on Windows 2000, and should work
         on any platform running Windows 98 or later.  There are probably
         some lingering bugs, especially when running a server.

   - Improved security
       - SURB keys are now rotated periodically.

       - The client now _always_ shuffles packets before delivery, and sends
         them in a random order.

   - Improved robustness
       - Servers are now addressed by hostname rather than IP.  It is now
         feasible to run a Mixminion server with a dynamic IP address.
         Support for old-style routing will be deprecated in 0.0.7.
         (Servers use a DNS-farm abstraction to avoid blocking on slow
         DNS lookups.  MMTP connections are still authenticated, so attacks
         against DNS can at worst delay packets from arriving.)

       - The path generation logic has been largely rewritten to use the
         optimal routing method for each server-to-server pair.

       - The path generation code now chooses good paths for fragmented
         messages and messages with specific requirements on their exit
         nodes.

       - Client queues are generally less buggy.

       - Consistency enforcement between fragmentation and other modules.

       - Better spec compliance.

   - Improved performance
       - When flushing messages from the client queue, it is no longer
         necessary to load them all into RAM at once.

   - User interface tweaks
       - When running as a client, Mixminion now displays servers by nickname
         in addition to IP:port whenever possible.  Servers will gain this
         behavior in a later version, once they begin downloading
         directories.

       - The behavior of 'mixminion list-servers' has been changed: its
         default output is far terser and easier to parse than before, though
         output _even more_ verbose than previous can be selected.  Also,
         whereas the old implementation only listed servers by their
         lifetime, capabilities, and status, it is now possible to list
         arbitrary 'features' of the servers in the directory.

       - Error messages for timeouts are more reasonable; timeouts themselves
         should now work a little better than before.

       - A longstanding typo in the MMTP server's logging code has been
         resolved: running at DEBUG should be far terser and more reasonable
         than before.

       - Users can now send fragmented messages for reassembly by their
         recipients rather than exit servers.  (Client side reassembly is
         not yet implemented, however.)

       - Many error messages have been cleaned up, including a few related to
         SSL errors, Windows internals, corrupt databases, unsupported
         databases.

   - Build improvements
       - Use the preferred version of Python if one exists.

       - Add build target to output test vectors for crypto functionality.

       - Support the DESTDIR environment variable

       - Check SHA1 digest on downloaded OpenSSL 0.9.7c.

   - Other bugfixes too numerous to mention.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/1CF4zgimHDtOLu4RAuWFAJ4/+JMEB1RlS7rh8xLxrOlDmkE9FQCbBY18
rWX6hg8zo3qeF5BWqaduY4s=
=awdk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----