QuickSilver and MesNews with Stunnel

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QuickSilver and MesNews with Stunnel
Preparation and Installation Section
I. Send messages to News Groups (not completely anonymous) through
MesNews/Stunnel (The MesNews program can also be used to download
and read news when combined with Stunnel.)
II. Send Anonymous Emails and MailToNews Messages through the Remailer
System through QuickSilver/Stunnel
Stunnel is an encryption tunneling program that can be used to securely
connect to the news.mixmin.net news server and the drooper.mixmin.net mail
server. Although the connections between your computer and these two
servers are secure, nevertheless, your IP address is known by these servers.
Therefore, all of your news traffic could be detected. There is nothing in a
post header, however, that could link directly to you. (You should not use the
MesNews mail client with this Stunnel setup.) Your QuickSilver remailer
traffic is still secure, however, when using QuickSilver with Stunnel because
it has been encrypted to be further routed through the remailer system.
Purpose of this document: This document will attempt to explain through
step by step instructions how to set up the following programs that will:
1. read and post (not completely anonymous) messages to news groups
(your news posts will be anonymously displayed in all news groups);
2. send anonymous emails through the remailer system;
with the MesNews news client and the QuickSilver mail client through Stunnel.
Preparations:
Go to the 'QuickSilver' topic in this help and install and set up QuickSilver
according to the instructions.
Go to the links below and download the following programs:
www.mesnews.net
(Click on the flag identifying your language, click on the '.download' link on the
left side of the page, and click the 'click here' button to download the
MesNews program. The download file should look something like:
'setup-mesnews-1.8.2.0.exe'.)
www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html
(Click on the most current and actively developed branch of Stunnel to
download the Stunnel program. It should have the most recent date and look
something like this:
'688870 Sep 20 13:49:31 2008 stunnel-4.26-installer.exe'
The similarly named file that has the '.asc' appended to its end is the signature
file that can be used to verify the '.exe' file. Verifying the file is beyond the
scope of these setup instructions.)
http://cdn.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/deskapp/PreWarn.zip
(This program will make it easier to start Stunnel and other programs.)
Installations:
Step 1: Install MesNews by double clicking on the '.exe'. I like to keep all my
encryption programs in a special folder called 'C:\Encryption\', however,
it shouldn't make any difference where you install any of these programs.
Keep the programs in separate folders, however. You could use
'C:\Encryption\MesNews\' for the MesNews files.
Note: MesNews likes to put the downloaded news into a folder that is
outside of the folder where MesNews is installed. I personally like
to keep it in a folder within the MesNews folder as below. This
suggestion will also help you more easily find these messages to
clean them out. Cleaning out old messages will be covered later.
Step 2. Install Stunnel in the folder of you choice by double clicking on the
Stunnel installation .exe.
Step 3: Install the PreWarn program in its own folder. Later you will be copying
the PreWarn.exe to the QuickSilver and MesNews folders to keep the
start parameters separate.
-- End of program installation section. --
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The following instructions will show you how to setup:
Stunnel , MesNews, and QuickSilver Setup Section
Stunnel Setup:
Step 1. Go to the Stunnel folder and create a file named 'banana-nntps.cfg' and
'banana-smtp.cfg'. You can usually do this using Notepad. If you need
a file editor for this, this one will do:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/
Save the 'banana-nntps.cfg' file with the following data therein:
client = yes
#
[BANANA_NNTP]
accept = 127.0.0.1:120
connect = news.mixmin.net:563
Save the 'banana-smtp.cfg' file with the following data therein:
RNDbytes = 2048
RNDfile = bananarand.bin
RNDoverwrite = yes
client = yes
options = ALL
#
[BANANA_SMTP]
protocol = smtp
accept = 2525
connect = drooper.mixmin.net:2525
delay = no
-- End of Stunnel setup section. --
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PreWarn Setup:
Step 1. Copy the PreWarn.exe from the folder it was installed in to your
QuickSilver folder. Next, click on the PreWarn.exe to start it and
copy and paste the lines below into the program's window and then
click the Quit button:
QuickSilver/Stunnel
File:your path to this file\qs.exe
dosFile:your path to this file\stunnel.exe banana-smtp.cfg
Step 2. Copy the PreWarn.exe from the folder it was installed in to your
MesNews folder. Next, click on the PreWarn.exe to start it and
copy and paste the lines below into the program's window and then
click the Quit button:
MesNews/Stunnel
File:your path to this file\MesNews2.exe
dosFile:your path to this file\stunnel.exe banana-nntps.cfg
Step 3. Now when you want to start QuickSilver to use with Stunnel or MesNews
to use with Stunnel, you can simply start the PreWarn.exe within the
corresponding folder and click on the 'Start and Quit' button to start
everything at once. (If you have set up MesNews to have two servers,
one for Stunnel and another for OmniMix, then you could add this
additional line to the PreWarn window:
'File:your path to this file\OmniMix.exe')
-- End of PreWarn setup section. --
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MesNews Setup:
Step 1. Start Stunnel. The program will show up as an icon in the system tray.
Step 2. Start MesNews and click the upper left corner menu item: 'File' and then
'Settings'. Click on the necessary tab and set the fields therein to:
After setting these fields, click 'Apply'.
Step 3. Next click on the menu item: 'Server' and 'New Server'. Set the
fields therein to:
Use port 120 for the news port here. This will keep you from having
any conflicts with OmniMix, if you are setting up this installation as
another additional server with a MesNews / OmniMix installation.
After setting these fields, click 'Apply'.
Step 4. Now you need to download all the news groups. Do this by right clicking
on the 'Mixmin via OmniMix' line and then click 'Show newsgrouplist'.
Step 5. Clicking on 'Show newsgrouplist' will bring up the window below. After
the list is built, go down and click on the group you desire to monitor.
After clicking on a group, then click the 'Subscribe' button to subscribe
to that group. After making all of your selections, click the 'Close'
button at the bottom of the interface.
Step 6a. There is one final step that has to be done to each of the newsgroups
you have chosen. Right click on each of the news group names and
then click the 'Group Properties (unique.group.name)' menu item. This
will bring up the window in Step 6b.
Step 6b. Check the 'Download headers + bodies' check box found in the
'Synchronization' tab, and then click 'Apply'. Again, this needs to be
done for each news group that you choose in Step 5, so now go back
to Step 6a and do the same for any additional news groups that you
have selected.
Note: A word of caution here. It is important that you check 'Download
headers + body's'. It is also important that you allow MesNews to
download the headers and message bodies. If you were to prematurely
click on a news item before MesNews had downloaded it, you could
reveal that you were interested in that particular news message
because you would cause it to download out of sequence. (Be informed
that some messages may automatically download out of sequence, but
this is not a problem.)
With the 'Download headers + body's' setting checked, your computer
could accumulate quite a large number of old news messages. It would
be a good idea to delete these old messages from time to time. You can
do this by searching for folders that are within your MesNews folder
(see: 'Installations:', 'Step 1:', 'Note:') that contain the same name as
your chosen news groups. Once these folders are located, you can then
delete some or all of the files within. The file names will look something
like this: '20081108-1.news'. Use the file dates to determine which ones
to delete.
After setting these fields, click 'Apply'.
Step 7. This modification is not required, but will reduce the header information
so that you only see two header fields above news messages. Find the
'Options of display...' button on the MesNews interface and click it, then
click the 'Header' and 'Custom headers to display' menu items which will
bring up the window below. Check the 'Sujet (Subject:)' and
'Message ID (Message-ID:)' check boxes only, and then click 'Apply'.
Go back through and click the 'Options of display...' button and 'Header'
menu and check the 'Custom headers' menu item. If you ever need to
view all headers, you can simply click on the 'All headers' menu item.
After making these changes, click 'Apply'.
You should now be ready to use MesNews with OmniMix to view and
answer news articles. Be sure that OmniMix is running when you start
MesNews.
Note: There is an altered english language file shipped in the zip file with
this Help. It makes a few changes so as to keep various lines from
over running some of the control descriptions in the MesNews
interface. Backup the mesnews2.gb.lang file found in the 'Language'
folder that is within the folder where MesNews was installed. Then
replace the mesnews2.gb.lang with the same file shipped with this
Help.
-- End of MesNews setup section. --
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