Mystic BBS Wiki

Mystic BBS uses Cryptlib in order to perform the encryption for SSH and SSL-based servers and clients. This library will be automatically detected on server startup, or whenever an outbound SSH menu action is executed from the BBS itself.

The following sections outline how to install Cryptlib for each particular operating system.

Download the latest version of Cryptlib from the following link below. It is important that the latest official version is used with Mystic, Using older / different versions may run you into security vulnerabilities or any number of other issues.

Website: https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/cryptlib/download.html

Mirror of 3.4.4.1: http://www.mysticbbs.com/downloads/cl3441.zip

There seems to be an issue with the latest CryptLib with 32-bit Linux operating systems that will cause Mystic to crash upon startup. If you experience this problem it may be worth trying an older version that can be downloaded from the Mystic website:

Older version: http://www.mysticbbs.com/downloads/cl3431.zip

In Windows, Mystic looks for the file “cl32.dll” or “cl64.dll” depending on if the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Mystic is being used.

Luckily the archive downloaded in the above section already has these files compiled and ready to go within the archive. To install Cryptlib then is to simply copy the appropriate file into your root Mystic BBS directory or somewhere in the library path so that Mystic can detect it.

In addition to the .DLL file, Cryptlib has a dependency on the Visual C++ runtime which may or may not need to be installed on your particular system. If you have the appropriate .DLL file in the root Mystic BBS directory but you still get a message on server startup that says Cryptlib is not installed, then you likely need to install this runtime:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48145

In Linux, Mystic looks for Cryptlib in the “libcl.so” file, which must be created by compiling the source code.

For many installs of Linux the compiler setup is not included by default, check by typing in a terminal:

whereis gcc

You should see several locations (like)

gcc: /usr/bin/gcc /usr/lib/gcc /usr/bin/X11/gcc /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz

If you get no locations you need to install it, using a terminal do:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential manpages-dev

Then check again with 'whereis gcc' to make sure.

The source is contained in the above download section. Once the file has been downloaded, it must be extracted into its own directory on the Linux machine. The archive has source files that are stored in the Windows format, so it must be extracted and converted to Linux format. This can be done by using the “-a” option of unzip. If this step is skipped, the source code will not properly compile.

The following steps can be executed to compile and install Cryptlib:

• Download the source code .zip into its own directory (lets say /cryptlib and cl3431.zip for this example)
• Switch to the /cryptlib directory where the cl3431.zip is located
• Type “unzip -a cl3431.zip” to extract the source code ZIP into the /cryptlib directory
• Type “sudo make shared”
• Type “ls libcl*.so*” to see the name of the generated library. For example: libcl.so.3.4.3
• Move the library into the library path and rename it so that Mystic will find it. Execute the following:
• “sudo mv libcl.so.3.4.3 /usr/lib/libcl.so”

You can now delete the /cryptlib directory if you wish. The library is installed and read to be used by Mystic!

In OS X, Mystic looks for Cryptlib in the “libcl.dylib” file, which must be created by compiling the source code.

The source is contained in the above download section. Once the file has been downloaded, it must be extracted into its own directory on the OS X machine. The archive has source files that are stored in the Windows format, so it must be extracted and converted to Unix format. This can be done by using the “-a” option of unzip. If this step is skipped, the source code will not properly compile.

The following steps can be executed to compile and install Cryptlib:

• Download the source code .zip into its own directory (lets say /cryptlib and cl3431.zip for this example)
• Switch to the /cryptlib directory where the cl3431.zip is located
• Type “unzip -a cl3431.zip” to extract the source code ZIP into the /cryptlib directory
• Type “sudo make shared”
• Type “ls libcl*.dylib*” to see the name of the generated library. For example: libcl.3.4.3.dylib
• Move the library into the library path and rename it so that Mystic will find it. Execute the following:
• “sudo mv libcl.3.4.3.dylib /usr/lib/libcl.dylib”

You can now delete the /cryptlib directory if you wish. The library is installed and read to be used by Mystic!