[Nym3-devel] Specs clarification for the RELAY command.

[Nick Mathewson]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 11:41:13PM +0100, Laurent Fousse wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm proposing the following patch for clarification of the specs.
> There's still one point worth discussing : MIME messages.
> 
> IMO we want to allow them, because they're useful for PGP signatures,
> file attachments and so on. But at the same time, it seems to me MIME
> messages are a more efficient mean of propagation for malware (is it
> true or is it just my impression ?), so maybe we want to leave it up
> to the nymserv operator to filter them out.

The issue with MIME isn't malware; it's distinguishability IMO.
There's really no way to have a non-dBistinguishable JPEG.  But yeah, I
think in the long run Mixminion and Nymbaron both need to support MIME.

> I think we already discussed on irc the problem of multipart
> separator, which reduce the anonymity set. In nymbaron we plan to
> deconstruct the message and reconstruct it with the python `email'
> module so that the separator can't be used to distinguish between
> nymusers (Zax is writing that I think). Did I forget anything else of
> the kind ?

Well, are we certain all python versions have an "email" module that
behaves the same, and that they always will?  Sounds dangerous.

> Do we need to add this MIME-reconstruction to the specs ?

Probably.  Not every implementation will be in Python, and other
implementors shouldn't need to read Python code in order to keep
indistinguishable.

> Should it happen on the server, or on the client ?

Possibly both; at least on the client I think.

yrs,
-- 
Nick Mathewson
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