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<TITLE>T E X T F I L E S</TITLE>
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<H1>BBS Destruction and Hacking</H1>
<P>
This section of files contains how-tos and stories centered around the
dark flipside of the BBS world: BBS hacking. This is the process of somehow
breaking into a BBS program, the actual program that runs the BBS, and
then either halting it, deleting it, or otherwise taking down the
machine.
<P>
By doing this, of course, the users would bring to a crashing halt the only
line of communication that community had; the single machine that everyone's
words and thoughts were being kept. Taken from this perspective, it seems
foolish, but in some locations there were a lot of BBSes, and in many 
cases, the BBS would be back up, shaken but not gone, by the next morning.
<P>
One can make an argument for the feeling of power this might give a young
modem user. One also can't discount the scads of bland, uninteresting
BBSes that populated the landscape, who only provided an interest to those
who could penetrate its meager defenses and shake it by the scruff of the
neck.
<P>
Of course, the software designed for bulletin boards in the 1980's was often
the work of programmers using their spare time, so while the security would
be existent, it would not be bulletproof. In the case of some programs (like
the GBBS software), the code would be in something like the BASIC computer
language, and certain Back Doors that had been put into the program were
then known to all.  By giving these BBS programs the wrong information at
the right time, users could make the system die, or worse, get access to
the command prompt of the BBS computer, causing havok all over the place.
<P>
<TABLE WIDTH=100%>
<TD BGCOLOR=#00FF00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Filename</B><BR></FONT></TD>
<TD BGCOLOR=#00DD00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Size</B><BR></FONT></TD>
<TD BGCOLOR=#00AA00><FONT COLOR=#000000><B>Description of the Textfile</B><BR></TD></TR>

