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IceChat

IceChat is an open source IRC Client developed by Snerf in July of 2000, first named sIRC. This version still exists and works with very minimum features.

Screenshot:

sIRC Screenshot

It was then recoded from scratch and renamed to VClient in August of 2001 to Icechat.

Screenshot:

VClient Screenshot

To this date, Icechat has now managed to have its on in-built VBS script engine as well as many everyday IRC features. The best feature, It’s FREE! Ice chat is compatible with Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista and also Windows 7, it has also been tested on 64bit XP, Vista and Windows 7.

IceChat also has some very unique features that make it a special IRC Client. A few features to be noted include but not limited to built in emoticons, which can de disabled if the user wishes, a Favorite Server Tree, IRCv3 capabilities and built in virus scanners.

Since the beginning of IceChat, it has now gone through multiple rewrites and is now cross-platform friendly. It now has mirc scripting abilities, VB Scripting and multi-language support. IceChat has now had over 30,000 downloads with a few Beta testers to make sure the release version doesnt have any major bugs.

IceChat is now in version 9, which started in January of 2009 in C# and was yet again a rewrite. The latest release of v9 was released February 9th, 2013.

Icechat currently has its own support channel on the Freenode IRC network at #IceChat

The CloakNet Project

The CloakNet Project is a program that encrypts messages on an IRC network using plain text. It was developed on the .NET platform, as well as having a Python version for Linux users. When executed, cloaknet puts itself inbetween the IRC Client that the user is using and the IRC server so that anything sent to and from the IRC Client is encrypted for secure communication.

The CloakNet Project is currently in Beta Version. This means it works, but there are many bugs to be found and fixed. Both the source code and the binaries are available for download. The current list of Clients that have been tested with the beta version are: mIRC, irssi, Trillian, X-Chat, Bersirc, KVIrc, Pidgin, Visual IRC, ChatIRC, BitchX, Konversation, Snak, Ircle, & Colloquy.

Cloaknet currently uses 256 bit Rijndael/AES. Currently, all messages that are decrypted via CloakNet are prepended with “++”, this is to inform you that the message needed decrypted and were not sent on an unencrypted channel. This prepended stamp will never be sent outside of the network, and is not considered a CloakNet identifier.

When the Cloaknet program is running on your system, You will simply connect your preferred IRC Client to the CloakNet daemon, which then will allow encryption of all your messages sent and recieved on your Client. It will then forward your Client to your preferred IRC Network. There is no modifications required to the client or the server for this to be possible.

For this all to be possible, any and all users wishing to communicate with each other via CloakNet much have a common Pre-Shared Key (PSK). Users without CloakNet, or a PSK, will see encrypted text instead. With the PSK, CloakNet will decrypt the text and forward it to your client un-encrypted.

Below is the infrastructure in which CloakNet uses to connect your IRC Client to the desired Network using the PSK, both on Windows and Linux. All information below was taken directly from the CloakNet Website.

Operation (.NET):

The current version (.NET 20080229.0320) command structure is as follows:

cloaknet.exe [remotehost:port] [psk] [localhost:port] [initvector]

[remotehost:port] Required
[psk] Required
[localhost:port] Optional
[initvector] Optional

For Example:

C:\cloaknet.exe irc.quaknet.org:6667 preSharedKeyHere 192.168.1.1:1337 1234567890123456

or

C:\cloaknet.exe irc.freenet.org:6667 preSharedKeyHere localhost:1337 1234567890123456

Operation (Python):

The current version (Python 0.2) command structure is as follows:

python.exe irc-python.py

Configure the proxy.ini file as follows (on one line no more):
[server_name] [server_port] [proxy_port] [initial_value] [pass_key] [salt]
For Example:
b0rk.uk.quakenet.org 6667 9997 3u76@B24eFg5c1D9 key456 salt56789

Known Bugs:

There is currently a known bug which is thought to be related to DCC, which causes CloakNet to crash. If/When this happens, Restart CloakNet after ensuring all other CloakNet daemons are kill, once it has restarted you may be informed that CloakNet cannot bind to the last port in which you used. If this happens, simply change the port CloakNet is running on. If you are running CloakNet on a remote network host, you may need to open/forward another port before changing the port.

Where do I download this?

Simply Download Cloaknet from the CloakNet Website.

LogSmurf!

LogSmurf is an IRC chat log search engine developed and maintained by Rob Whitney along side his CoFounder, Kamonra. Rob is well known on IRC these days by the nick “xnite”. It was forked from the known Sphider PHP Bot & Search Engine. It has been heavily modified and many more features added into it.

LogSmurf! currently houses over 50,000 logs from 11 indexed servers, just under 40,000,000 keywords that can be used to search the logs including nicknames, phrases, and just common searches, thats over 5 gigabytes of IRC logs since its release at the beginning of July, 2012.

After xnite noticed that people were using pastebin to post and share their IRC logs, he then added in a feature to allow users to have their networks and/or channels indexed and logged by LogSmurf by visiting http://logsmurf.com/get-indexed.php.

If you do not wish to have you network and/or channel indexed but you have some logs you wish to have added to LogSmurf, no problem, simply visit http://logsmurf.com/submit.php, post your logs, but read the rules before you do. There are filters that will cancel out any and all credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc.

If you need any help with LogSmurf!, there is a public IRC chat in which you can join and ask questions or give suggestions by clicking HERE.

Efnet faces major attack on New Year’s Eve [Update 2]

IRC servers with code based on old Ratbox 2.0 code are vulnerable to a bug in the code that handles user authentication. It was found and published at 7 pm GMT by IRC member Fudge when he messed around with the protocol TS6. Charybdis developer nenolod was informed about the issue in the development channel #charybdis. Shortly after that him and other members agreed on that the bug was “pretty serious”.

A working example of how an IRC server could be brought down via this bug was published in the channel. Some person, or a group people, began to misuse the information they presumably got from the channel in order to bring down Efnet. At 10:45 pm GMT, many servers have been patched and restarted, but there are still ten servers, including services.int [Update: services.int is down due to unrelated maintenance according to EFnet], missing, according to the automatically updated network map on http://map.efnet.net/. To bring a server down, the attacker does not need any special privileges. All they would need to do is to send one line consisting of less than 15 characters.

A new version of Charybdis was released around 22.00 pm later this same evening. Patch files for both Ratbox and Charybdis have been sent to many IRC administrators, so that they can secure their servers against this exploit as soon as possible.

Some of the affected channels include #irchelp, a channel that now has a new date of creation:
-!- Channel #irchelp created Mon Dec 31 22:32:01 2012

It is likely that the operators of #chanfix will get a dramatically increased work load during the next couple of hours. They have prepared well by setting the topic of the channel:
Yes we know EFnet just took a mickey. Plz state the channel with the problem and wait…

There are rumours around claiming Hybrid is also affected, but they have not been confirmed [Update 2: According to the IRCd-Hybrid team, it is not affected by the vulnerability]. As the number of IRC servers forked from Ratbox, with exploitable code, is relatively high it is highly likely that servers on many networks will go up and down for the next few days.

Freenode was one of the first networks to patch themselves, occuring only minutes after the seriousness of the issue had been established. Thanks to staff member tomaw all relevant servers could be secured before any harm was done.

IRC servers which have been confirmed by their developers as patched against this vulnerability are:

  • ShadowIRCd 6.3.3
  • Charybdis 3.4.2
  • Ratbox 3.0.8

Article to be updated when more information is available…

 

Link to the original advisory: http://www.ratbox.org/ASA-2012-12-31.txt

KiwiIRC

KiwiIRC is a web-based, open source IRC Client that was started around two years ago by Darren Whitlen, known as prawnsalad on IRC, as a “Can I do this” type of project. It was abandoned for a few months due to lack of time. After those few months passed Darren had some other developers who grew an interest into the project and jumped in helping release it once again.

The goal of the KiwiIRC client is to allow users without IRC knowledge to be able to communicate with each other on a simple to use web-based irc client. Aside from the client being web-based, it can also be embedded onto your chatsite and used for your personal IRC network. For for information on this please see http://kiwiirc.com/embedding.

Besides the above facts, it now has a Google Chrome extension, as well as a Firefox application, and it is compatible with your Android/Apple phones and tablets.

KiwiIRC has plans for the near future to have a fully functional admin web-panel to help the admin/staff of an IRC network to maintain and control the users as well as change KiwiIRC configuration options, without having to manually edit the files.

Screenshots:

KiwiIRC

The open source project can be found at http://github.com/prawnsalad/kiwiirc.
For more information regarding KiwiIRC, please visit http://www.kiwiirc.com