Hey all - I've been developing an SSH server module for The Major BBS v10 (my own project, not affiliated with the MBBS team) and it's far enough along that I'm looking for a few sysops to test it on real boards.
The goal was to make SSH a first-class citizen alongside Telnet rather than something bolted on with a proxy: SSH callers register as normal BBS channels through the same TCP/IP layer the stock Telnet daemon uses, so every existing module, ANSI screen, and login flow works completely unchanged. Telnet and SSH run simultaneously and independently - no need to choose one.
Some specifics for the technically curious:
- Built on libssh (LGPL), not a homegrown protocol implementation
- Per-install Ed25519 + RSA host keys, generated on first run and never overwritten (regenerable on demand)
- Four auth modes: INTERACT (normal BBS prompt inside the encrypted session), PASSWORD, PUBKEY, and a new AUTO mode that logs a caller straight in on a valid key or password with no username needed, while anyone else (including brand-new callers) falls through to the standard User-ID/NEW prompt
- Users manage their own public keys in-BBS (/addkey, /mykey, /delkey) - only SHA-256 fingerprints are stored, key material never touches the server
- Brute-force lockout, handshake/idle timeouts, session caps, and fairly aggressive input validation given it's parsing untrusted network data
- Config is entirely online through the BBS Configuration Editor - no hand-edited files - though settings are applied on next restart rather than live, deliberately, since a bad port change shouldn't be able to take the whole BBS down mid-session
- Verified so far against OpenSSH (Windows + Linux), PuTTY, SyncTERM, and ZOC Currently in beta (beta5) - a handful of nasty bugs (duplicate-key insert crashes, a socket-reuse crash on rapid reconnect, a buffer overflow on a verbose key-exchange error) got shaken out through testing on a live board, which is exactly why I want more real-world traffic on it before calling it 1.0 stable.
If you're running MBBS v10 and are willing to install a beta module and report back, I'd really appreciate it. Happy to answer questions about the implementation too. Find it for download in the #sysopnetwork channel on the official MBBS v10 Discord server: https://discord.gg/ByM7Dm6bXY submitted by /u/Laudenbachm [link] [comments]