A BBS sysop friend got hacked through social engineering in 1987. Watching it happen taught me that the most dangerous vulnerabilities aren't in code - they're in assumptions about trust....
Running BBSs in the 1980s meant handling hardware, limited connections, users gaming the system, moderation, and community - with no cloud, no scaling, no support tickets. Lessons that still apply....
FidoNet was a global network connecting thousands of BBSs via scheduled phone calls. Email, newsgroups, file distribution - everything we associate with the internet existed first on FidoNet....
Trade Wars, Legend of the Red Dragon, Barren Realms Elite - BBS door games created the template for online gaming. First-person perspective from a SysOp who ran them....
1980s BBS culture created authentic communities through sysop relationships and local control. Taiwan's PTT still has 1.5M active users. First-person perspective from a former SysOp....