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1993-04-07 - Re: Real-time BBS Encryption??

Header Data

From: David Reeve Sward <sward+@cmu.edu>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 11654535c782cc9c5366170ef99da857aa5239a0935b0f28c523cc62d96cd6f5
Message ID: <kfkngsG00WBNQ6osED@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply To: <9304071935.AA26846@soda.berkeley.edu>
UTC Datetime: 1993-04-07 20:38:27 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 7 Apr 93 13:38:27 PDT

Raw message

From: David Reeve Sward <sward+@cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 93 13:38:27 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Real-time BBS Encryption??
In-Reply-To: <9304071935.AA26846@soda.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <kfkngsG00WBNQ6osED@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 7-Apr-93 Real-time BBS Encryption??
by Eric Hughes@soda.berkele 
> 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.

Actually, there is a rather old (for the PC) abstraction called FOSSIL
(Fido Opus Seadog Serial Interface Layer ... or so).  It is essentially
an extention/replacement for the BIOS int 0x14 driver.  It is certainly
possible to further extend this for encryption by adding some functions
to the interface.  The two FOSSILs I know of are X00 and BNU - They can
be found in oak.oakland.edu:/pub/msdos/fossil
-- 
David Sward    sward+@cmu.edu

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