Re: Strategies for getting encryption in widespread use QUICKLY

[rarachel@prism.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)]

I'm currently developing a Mac BBS.  (I don't know when I'll finish it
but I've been working on it for the last 3 years!)  I can put
patches in to connect to whatever crypto terms will be out there,
however, on the Mac, it's far easier to simply build a CommToolbox
connection tool which ANY Mac BBS or Mac terminal could interface
itself with.

The BBS would have to specifically know about the encryption tool
as it would need to link some key to a user...  But other than
that, the ability is already there.

If we come up with a standard for encoded TCP/IP and serial
communications and adapt existing programs to use them....
The serial communications would be much easier I suspect as most
unix machines can simply have device drivers written for them that
map an existing port to/from an encryption pipe and on to a
virtual device.   Ie: for every /dev/tty* you could have /dev/etty*

It'll be harder for DOS, but not impossible.  If anyone has the
sources to a fossil driver, there are plenty of BBS software that
use the fossils... Perhaps there would be some term programs that
do this too?

On Amiga????

(BTW: I've put off the Mac BBS for a while as I just stumbled on
something far more important: a crypto-stacker for the Mac!!!  I
hope to get something up in beta in the next few months.  I won't
do the actual encryption routines, but will provide plenty of hooks
for adding your own. I'm going to have it actually compress/decompress
and have some hooks...)