pull down to refresh
Thank you for the detailed explanation. Your reply really helped me understand how I could make my BBS publicly accessible. At least now I have an idea of which direction to take. My biggest concern now is security. I am running SkyLordsLab BBS on an old netbook with antiX Linux and I do not want users to have access to the actual system. You mentioned bwrap and Docker. Which one would you recommend for this setup? How can I isolate the BBS so users can only access the application through SSH without accessing the rest of the system? I still have a lot to learn about this. Thank you again for your help.
well... that's both bbs-internal security. Probably bwrap has the least overhead to put everyone in their own nice little sandbox. Docker is nice because you get network bridging if you need any comms (often beats messing with unix sockets), which you can then use standard iptables on. Run suricata in IDS mode on the laptop just in case and don't forget to actually monitor the logs.
Your bigger problem is the laptop itself and the network it hangs in. Give it its own network. Like some cheap unlimited data sim card. Don't expose your home or office network. It'll get pwnd in days.
Also make sure you're on a new linux kernel, e.g.:
$ uname -a
Linux somebox 6.12.112See https://kernel.org/ for patched-up LTS releases.
Thank you for taking the time to explain all of this. Your advice has helped me understand the risks involved in making my BBS publicly accessible. But I am starting to realize that publishing this project might be more complicated and risky than I originally expected. My main goal was to give an old netbook a new purpose instead of leaving it unused. I wanted to build something interesting with the hardware I already have without spending much money. Security is something I take seriously. I do not want to put my home network or other devices at risk just to make this project available to other people. Even if I follow all your suggestions I understand that some risks will still remain. And if I need a separate internet connection or additional equipment and services to reduce those risks then the cost of running this project starts to become higher than I intended. At that point it would defeat my original purpose. I wanted to make use of an old computer rather than turn it into something that requires more money and ongoing maintenance. I really appreciate your help. You have made me realize that I need to think more carefully about whether making this BBS public is worth the risks and costs. For now I would rather keep it as a local project than expose my network to unnecessary risks.
Risk will always remain because you're literally letting other people (and their bots, and OpenAI/Anthropic's employees hacking everything that accepts connections with apparent immunity) interact with your servers. Everything you isolate will reduce risk. If you do anything, do the separate network. Then, if someone hacks your BBS, you can just flash the disk.
Of course you are right about that. There will always be risks. But I started SkyLordsLab BBS because I wanted to do something useful with the old netbook I already have. That was my main goal from the beginning. If this project starts requiring extra expenses it could put me in a serious financial situation. The modem and other equipment you mentioned earlier are a bit expensive. A separate internet connection would also add more costs. I just wanted to make use of an old computer without spending much money.
Yes. So it wasn't part of the internet, it was pre-internet. Mid-90s you could also get an account on a shell service (over telnet/ssh). Some shells weren't Bourne, but instead were custom things. That's what this could serve as. So you expose it over ssh, make a user called
newwith passwordnew, that launches a user signup shell. Then, when someone has a user, their entry point is your "BBS".Secure it with bwrap or docker w/
--network none.