Yenta is still under active development, but this particular page is not. If you're interested in current research papers about Yenta, or obtaining a copy of Yenta, please start here instead. This page is one of many that were written in late 1994 and early 1995, and are being preserved here for historical purposes. If you're viewing this page, you probably found it via an old link or are interested in the history of how Yenta came to be. These pages have not been actively maintained since 1995, so you'll find all sorts of older descriptions which may not match the current system, citations to old papers and old results, and so forth. |
The reason why anonymity works in MUDs concerns the lack of a direct connection. Most MUDs do not permit non-wizard users to directly examine or change the state of their network, and mot do not reveal to non-wizard users where player connections are coming from. Since players therefore have no direct means of backtracking connections, anonymity is relatively easy to achieve.
One solution, assuming that agents are allowed direct connections to each other, it so employ a tactic of random reforwarding of messages before they are routed to the final destination. Such a scheme might require a blind signatures or other unusual protocols so the first few hops do not have to be particularly trusted.
Lenny Foner Last modified: Sat Dec 10 14:55:05 1994