[Coco] Anyone still play text adventure games?

[William Astle]

On 2011-05-24 07:17, Tony Cappellini wrote:
> ----------------------------------------
> From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 2:09 PM
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Anyone still play text adventure games?
> 
>>> I started up the server, you can play by telneting to 69.13.218.10 port
>>> 6809
> You do realize how easy it is to hack into your server right?
> Telnet isn't secure, and should never be used.

Okay, that might be overstating things some.

Telnet on its own is not necessarily insecure. Having some service that
can be accessed via telnet does not magically add security holes. (SMTP,
for instance, can be accessed via telnet.)

What makes telnet insecure is that there is no encryption on the
communication. That simply means it's possible, under the right
circumstances, for a third party to sniff the communications and know
what you typed and what the server sent you. A modern switched wired
network is unlikely to be sniffable but wireless is a different ballgame.

In the case of Bedlam, there is no authentication or other sensitive
information. Thus, Telnet does not contribute to or detract from the
security of the server as a whole.

A problem with the coding of the service (the Bedlam implementation in
this case) may allow someone access to arbitrary things on the server,
but this would still be a problem using SSH or any other means of remote
access.

Thus, simply having a Bedlam game on port 6809, which one accesses
normally using telnet, does NOT make the machine any more inherently
hackable than SMTP or SSH or any other "public" service does.