Eric Hughes wrote:
Is there a way to encrypt a remote users entire connection with the BBS, so that they would have to have a special term program to access the system?
For PC's, replacing the terminal software is really the best way. There is no effective abstraction of serial port hardware in the PC world. The int 0x14 driver in the BIOS was rampantly defective, and MSDOS does not provide a standard interface.
As a result, almost all comm software on PC's talks to the serial port directly. Now in MS Windows, there is abstraction for ther serial ports, but I don't know how easy it is to insert a device layer.
It would be best if the user only had to load a device driver or something so that they wouldn't all have to use the same comm program.
It might be possible, using a 386, to make a driver that acted as if it were hardware but actually did encryption. Ick. Reliability and cross-program compatibility would be shit. And it would have to be made compatible with whatever else was taking over the 386.
Using something like a FOSSIL driver (a replacement serial port driver that many BBSes use) you could do this. I would imagine that it would only encode when carrier is up and the BBS software sends an INT14 AX=xx instruction to turn on encryption. Tim -- Internet: pozar@kumr.lns.com FidoNet: Tim Pozar @ 1:125/555 Snail: Tim Pozar / KKSF / 77 Maiden Lane / San Francisco CA 94108 / USA POTS: +1 415 788 2022 Radio: KC6GNJ / KAE6247