IRC-Junkie.org – IRC News

“It is with great pleasure and much fanfare that we can now announce that the recent maintenance to the entire QuakeNet network was completed successfully” meeb announced on the QuakeNet website. QuakeNet uses an IRCd based on Undernet’s IRCu, and the current modified version named Snircd replaces the previous IRCd in use on QuakeNet named Asuka.

“Due to continued abuse, t-dialin will be permanently glined at 22:00 GMT today” we can read today on the QuakeNet website.

We asked Magpie, admin on QuakeNet, what type of abuse forced QuakeNet to Gline this large German ISP. “The majority of the abuse tends to be impersonating services in an attempt to steal users’ Q account passwords, and thus take over their channels. The abuse is not limited to this, however, and also includes mass spamming, spreading of Trojans and so on.”

“We are currently trialling a new system for user support in #feds”, meeb announced on the QuakeNet website.

During the test period, users requiring assistance will need to join #help, and explain their problem there. The #help staff will then supply a ticket for #feds, if an oper is required to solve the problem. During this testing period, #feds will be an invite only channel. With that ticket you can invite yourself during a 2 day time period into #feds.

“As you may have noticed, earlier today the password for every Q account was changed. This was due to a suspected leak of some encrypted passwords from the QuakeNet website, shortly beforehand, causing the passwords to be changed as a precautionary measure whilst we investigated”, magpie reports at the QuakeNet website.

The site also recommends that if you use this same password for other services, on IRC or not, to change those passwords as well.

“We would like to assure users that we are working hard to ensure this cannot happen again, and we apologise for any inconvenience caused”, magpie finishes.

Due to extensive abuse and trojan connections from several ISP’s the connections from those ISP’s have been restricted to a maximum of two connections per host.

“Any users attempting to make more than two connections to the network will receive an error message of “Too many connections from your host”, as well as having their connection refused. We apologise to any legitimate users connecting from these hosts, but the situation has become unavoidable”, magpie announced on the QuakeNet website.

ISP affected include Wannadoo in the Netherlands and France, ono.com, bezeqint.net, proxad.net and the well known Spanish rima-tde.net.