The Back Door

About this time (mid '80s) I was busy learning how to program my Apple II computer using Basic and Assembly Language. I was 'unemployed' and so I could spend my full time on these kinds of activities. Kootch was still working at K-mart. I also spent time studying chess, my other hobby. I decided to 'merge' the two hobbies by operating a 'BBS' (Bulletin Board System) for chess players. I called it, The Chess Board. Chess players could dial up my BBS  and make moves in the games they played with each other (like correspondence games). It was fun stuff for me. I had bought the BBS software from a Denver programmer (a kid!) who made some extra cash by selling such software.
 
By this time I was pretty paranoid. I knew that there was some creepy son-of-a-bitch out there somewhere who was trying  to fuck my life up, and I suspected there might be a 'back door' in the software which this S.O.B. might be able to utilize. So I studied the program code in detail before putting it 'on the air.' Most of it was written in Basic, which was easy to understand, but the 'driver' was written in 'machine language.' I was able to decipher the driver except for a few lines of code which made no sense to me. I deleted that code and put my BBS  online.
 
It all worked fine until one day the author of the software signed in. The system crashed immediately thereafter when he attempted to enter his 'back door.' He never called back. I think the main purpose of the back door was to punish people who were running pirated versions of his software.