Re: Real-time BBS Encryption??

[mccoy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Jim McCoy)]

Michael McMahon <0005857625@mcimail.com> writes:
[...]
> I'm wondering if there is a way to do [end-to-end encryption] with PCs?
> 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?

Sure, no problem, provided you are willing to do a lot of coding...

The basic idea would be to use public-key encryption to do a short
negotigiation of a one-time key to use for DES/IDEA encryption of the
session.  You could then use a public key for the system as a whole (with
which the users can encrypt thier personal public keys for uploading during
the initial connection) and the user's public key to send the key
transmitted from the BBS for the session.

All that would be necessary is for you to add a bit of code to the comm
program so that it would recognize when it was talking to a system such as
this and do the right thing when needed (the actual encryption code is
readily available in systems like PGP and the various DES implementations
out there.)  The downside is that there are a lot of terminal programs out
there for microcomputers and not many supply source code for such
modifications.  I had thought about using such a system when planning out a
raid-proof 386BSD system and the hassles of trying to get at least one
program to do this for every platform that might want to connect to such a
BBS was more work that I wanted to do.  Perhaps as an option (e.g. one line
using end-to-end encryption and others normal) for connecting to a system,
but if all the lines are done like this you will probably find making it
difficult for people to connect like this keeps people away from the
system.

jim