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DEF CON 12 - Len Sassaman, Mixmaster vs. Reliable: A Comparison of Two Anonymous Remailers

1,062 views · Published 18 February 2014 · 48:36 · Indexed 4 October 2026

Channel: DEFCONConference · 2014 · Science & Technology

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Len Sassaman,Mixmaster vs. Reliable: A Comparison of Two Anonymous Remailer Applications
The "Type II" remailer network has been operating since 1995, providing strong anonymity email services to the public. We recently performed an analysis of the anonymity provided by the two independent implementations of the Type II protocol. This is joint work with Claudia Diaz and Evelyne Dewitte, to be presented at the ESORICS conference in September.

This talk will discuss the methods used to evaluate the anonymity provided by Mixmaster 3.0 and Reliable 1.0.5. It will explain the threat models considered for email anonymity and known attacks agaist them, highlight the differences in the mixing algorithms used, identify potential areas of
weakness in the applications, and explain the reasoning behind the different design decisions in the two applications.

Len Sassaman is a communication security consultant specializing in Internet privacy and anonymity technologies. Formerly the security architect for Anonymizer and a software engineer for PGP Security, Len is now focusing on research in the area of practical attack-resistant anonymity systems which can be widely deployed and used by large groups. Additionally, Len is an anonymous remailer operator, and maintainer of the oldest actively-used anonymity software, Mixmaster.

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