Good thing there's no prior art...
On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, John Young wrote: > Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 11:16:51 -0700 > From: John Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: CDR: Intel Patents Anonymity Server > > http://cryptome.org/intel-anon.htm > > [Excerpt. There are 15 images in the patent.] > > Anonymity Server, May 14, 2002 > > Description > > BACKGROUND > > 1. Field > > The present invention relates to the field of communications. > More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and > method for maintaining anonymous and traffic analysis resistant > communications over a communication link. > > 2. Related Art > > Over the last few years, personal and commercial usage of the > Internet has increased dramatically. As a result, companies are > beginning to monitor such usage for a number of reasons. For > example, marketing companies can analyze Internet traffic in > order to develop consumer profiles of various users or to obtain > information about ongoing projects by a competitive company. > > In an attempt to thwart data collection through traffic analysis > and provide message anonymity over public communication > links like the Internet, anonymous remailers are now being > provided. An "anonymous remailer" is a computer that > receives an electronic message over a communication link > from a sender and redirects that electronic message to an > intended recipient. By encrypting audible and/or viewable > data of the electronic message, the integrity and confidentiality > of that data would be protected against unauthorized access > by the operator of the anonymous remailer or an interloper. > > It is evident that the above-described conventional communication > scheme would substantially ensure the preservation of the > integrity and confidentiality of data within an electronic message. > However, this conventional communication scheme fails to protect > the integrity or confidentiality of data transmitted back to the > original sender in the form of a response from the intended > recipient. > > In certain situations, anonymous remailers have been configured > to assign a unique tag to each original sender of an electronic > message before the electronic message is redirected to the > intended recipient. This tag is used as a secret key by the intended > recipient to encrypt data contained in a response to the electronic > message. However, to support this communication scheme, the > anonymous remailer would have to decrypt the response with the > tag and re-encrypt the response with the public key of the original > sender because the intended recipient would have no knowledge > of the original sender, namely a public key of the original sender. > Since the operator responsible for the anonymous remailer would > have access to the return path of the response, reliance on the > integrity of that operator is required. Clearly, this substantially > reduces the level of *security* of this communication scheme. > > Therefore, it would be desirable to create an electronic system > and a corresponding method for maintaining anonymous and > traffic analysis resistant communications over a communication > link without dependence on the integrity of the system operator. > > -----
