Is Renegade BBS safe now? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HexVuDuX · 2019-01-18 15:57 I used to run a Renegade BBS back in the 90’s and recently decided to get my old ANSI art and menus out of storage and revive it. I’m just scared of making it public because RG was known for having backdoors and bugs that give you SysOp access or crashed you to the BBS’s DOS command prompt! But does anyone know if Renegade v1.20 from 2011 is safe or safer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G_Porgie · 2019-01-18 16:02 At this point, any BBS you set up is going to have "security through obscurity", so I wouldn't really worry too much about running inherently insecure old software, as long as you properly isolate the server (for instance, put it on a VM behind a firewall and only open the telnet port). Also, Mystic is very close in design to Renegade, and it is being actively developed, it is probably a good alternative if you're really worried about security. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2019-01-18 16:20 I run mine in a dosbox sandbox on a el-cheapo vms Linux host. I’ve backed up the whole script that runs and the program files. If all hell breaks loose, I can smoke it and spin a backup up in a couple hours. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Buelldozer · 2019-01-18 23:55 ^ This It's a brave new world out there and something like a BBS should at least be run in a VM if not containerized. If it gets crushed then shrug your shoulders and load a new instance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DigitalGoose · 2019-01-19 09:18 > RG was known for having backdoors Was it? I've never heard of this until today. The author seemed pretty honest. There was a Telegard backdoor that it inherited, but he took it out early on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thesecretdave · 2019-01-19 09:51 A thought; if someone managed to compromise your BBS and got a DOS shell, couldn’t they just run ‘mount Y ~’ and mount your Linux home directory to the Y drive? From there, they could probably mess with any bashrc/cronjob/script-files lying around and convince something to run either at a scheduled time or when you next log in, for example some sort of reverse shell (bash over netcat or similar). Depending on server configuration, they could probably manage to save a bogus ssh key to your authorized_key file and login as you via ssh without a password. Either way, I wouldn’t like to assume a DOSbox container is safe! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DuckWithARedBowtie · 2019-01-19 12:50 I understood it as using an actual VM, not just a DOSbox, but I might be wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesseroonie · 2019-01-19 12:51 Good observation. Solvable; don't run it as yourself. Create a user, lock said user out of everything, set the user's shell as dosbox. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DuckWithARedBowtie · 2019-01-19 12:51 I'd rather use ssh with chroot jail than telnet tbh :/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HexVuDuX · 2019-01-19 16:05 Thanks everyone. ​ I got hacked once a long time ago. I was coming back home from school, turn on my BBS monitor to see what was up and... some dude was in C:\\ command prompt in the middle of uploading some BBS stuff to his harddrive. ​ Not that I want to sound scary or anything, but that was the last time I got hacked. A buddy told me to delete the File Archiving (or something like that) menu and commands. That was the main exploit at the time. Only sad part is, I Googled up "Renegade BBS hack and exploits" and found nothing. ​ There's some weird hacks that some people claim are real. Like typing //IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII... at the main menu a hundred times and crashing your BBS to DOS prompt......... it doesn't work. At least not in the Renegade BBS version I downloaded. ​ But no one seems to have any info about this infamous "File Archive Menu" by typing //A or something in the File Menu. Maybe it was just removed in version v1.20? ​ P.S. I'm writing this for education purposes only. Please don't go searching or sharing detailed instructions how to execute real damaging hacks. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2019-01-19 17:07 That would be total nostalgia then. I kept getting hacked and restoring backups back in the 90’s. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YserviusPalacost · 2019-01-22 16:35 Oh man, those 3.5" HD disks with the hole drilled in the corner (so they could be formatted to 1.44 MB) were lifesavers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2019-01-23 06:42 renegade never had any backdoors. it had a flaw that was easily corrected by the sysop's command line to extract files. you could use pkzip1 and hex edit the path in the .zip file to overwrite stuff. but you shouldnt have a command line that allows overwriting. that issue does not exist anymore. has not for a long time. renegade bbs never had back doors. it didnt have bugs that gave people sysop access or crashed people to the dos prompt. yes it's 'safe' to run. i suggest you run synchronet, mystic or vadv ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2019-01-23 06:42 no it wasnt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2019-01-23 06:45 you used to be able to do //\\[command] or something like that when you are a sysop. that ability doesnt exist and has not existed for a long time. it allowed you to execute sysop commands if you had sysop access. no different than being in the sysop menu if you had the access. someone probably gave you a backdoor virus. there is nothing 'infamous' about the file archive menu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-01-23 23:24 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2019-01-23 23:25 mystic is really not close to renegade. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- axxedlex · 2019-01-25 13:25 I think you have your disks all confused. The 5.25" floppies were the ones you could punch out the corner on and they maxed out at 1.2MB by the time they were replaced with the 3.5" 1.44 MB rigid floppies which had a write protect lock you could engage by sliding a lock in one corner. 20+ yrs ago was a long time for some of us but not as long as for others :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yesindubitably · 2019-04-01 09:05 Oh it was vulnerable. I remember testing it myself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2019-05-21 03:02 how do you test it and on what version? i have all the rg versions here . i can check it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yesindubitably · 2019-05-21 14:25 Sorry it was over 25 years ago. There is one method outlined here: http://textfiles.com/bbs/DESTRUCTION/ which uses many 'I' characters. It looks like some kind of buffer overflow.