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April 2004
April 2004
Old archived news. These items have been saved from old setups and are nothing else then a plain text dump. Just there if there is a need for old news.
Snak version 4.11 released
Thursday, April 29 2004 by Asmo
"Version 4.11 improves support for networks that extend the IRC protocol, like the unrealirc network. Snak is now able to automatically accommodate new user modes and channel types. The helptags in the user list will display the status of the users (IRC operators, channel operators, voiced users, etc.)", Snak coder Ken Sorensen said.
Further there have been several bugs fixed. Snak means "talk" in English, and is a IRC client for the Mac. You can find the homepage of Snak here.
There have been 0 comments added to this article.
O'Reilly announces "IRC Hacks" book
Monday, April 26 2004 by Asmo
Paul Mutton sent a announcement to IRCJunkie about a new book coming up in the hacks series of O'Reilly.
"The book "IRC Hacks" will be out in July 2004 and will be published by O'Reilly", Paul starts. "Some of the world's most renowned IRC hackers have grouped together to contribute their hacks, making this book essential reading for anybody who wants to create IRC bots, tweak their IRC client, or even write their own."
The book is divided up in 15 chapters including the basics such as Connecting to IRC progressing to Enhancing IRC Clients and more advanced topics such as Writing IRC Bots.
The book includes a foreword by Jarkko Oikarinen who invented the IRC protocol in 1988.
There have been 15 comments added to this article.
Klient 2.1 beta tested
Monday, April 26 2004 by Asmo
The website for the alternative IRC client for windows Klient reports that version 2.1 is currently being beta tested. According to news poster CybrCyfr "the beta testing is going very well".
"Tom has done an amazing job, even more so than before. There is lots of new eye candy, and new functionality", CybrCyfr posted.
We asked coder Tom if he could elaborate a bit more on the new features of this version. "... the most noticeable difference is that its look and feel is a lot more "XPish". It has all alpha-blended icons (including the scripted pop-up menus) and new concepts like the Klient Control Center, which is an XP control-panel-like window that is a central point for configuration (scripts, options, etc.) and other items. The control center is also easily expandable for future versions. Some new toolbar, menu, and docking styles also adds to the look. The DCC transfers view now docks to the bottom, and there are also some new windows for scripters than can dock there as well (for viewing script timers and variables).
Some popular requests for better control over the sorting/ordering of the switchbar have been met, along with a few other changes to options. And, thanks to improvements in the Script Definition dialog, Klient now has built-in definitions for RubyScript and Python (in addition to VBScript, JScript, and Perl) and hopefully will be immediately adaptable to any other WSH-enabled script language that comes along."
Klient supports Windows Scripting Host (WSH) to script the client. Languages that can be used to script Klient include VBScript, JScript, Perl, and Python. We asked Tom how far the documentation is completed on the scripting; "Not as far along as I would like. Its a tedious process. What's there is pretty decent; I've included several examples for every method of every object as I've been going along. But, I kinda stopped about a third of the way through and went back to development of some new features. I'll get back to the help files again though."
There is no estimated time frame on when the version will be final. "It is difficult to estimate dates in a project that I work on in my free time", Tom explains.
There have been 0 comments added to this article.
DCC2 protocol announced
Sunday, April 25 2004 by Asmo
A group of IRC client programmers announced today they are working on a new direct connection protocol named DCC2 of which the draft can be found here.
"The DCC2 community, a group of leading IRC client developers, today announced an initiative to create standards that will make establishing direct connections between IRC clients easier. The group will also work to standardize the protocols used to transfer files and text messages between clients once a connection has been established, allowing for a simpler and more feature-rich user experience" developer Dan Smith wrote in a press release to IRCJunkie. Smith is also the lead developer of the windows IRC client dIRC.
Besides dIRC, the developers of the next IRC clients are involved with the new DCC2 protocol; Visual IRC, Ircle, KVirc, Bersirc, Chatzilla and OrnateIrc. We asked Smith why key clients like mIRC and BitchX are yet not present in this list.
"I have not talked with the authors of the clients you listed personally. Our group is following a standards process and would appreciate input from anyone who expresses interest! I am personally impressed with the large number of major client authors (Windows, Unix, Mac) who have already expressed interest and are helping to write our drafts."
The current DCC protocol is known to be lacking in clarity where it comes down to finding out why something fails to work.
"The main goal of our negotiation draft is to identify connections that are more likely to be established. The second goal is to allow the clients to know exactly why a connection failed, instead of a silent failure" Smith explained their goal to improve in this area as well.
For users behind a NAT who are not really known with networking issues this is a well known source of problems. Smith explains how the DCC2 protocol would handle in case of problems in this situation: "... direct connections between two ipv4 users behind NAT/firewalls will still fail if they do not have ports forwarded for connections. However both clients will know why the connection failed and can take appropriate action, such as opening ports using UPNP or notifying the user that their network setup prevents connections. With the addition of IPv6 to direct irc connections, users can map ipv6 addresses inside of their NAT, and use ipv6 in the connection negotiation process as well. I highly recommend sixxs.net for anyone interested in ipv6 technology."
"File name and size information never needs to pass over IRC", the website of the DCC2 protocol reads. Some networks have taken action against channels where music files are being shared over DCC. We asked Smith if this will prevent the network to see what is being transmitted between the clients.
"The main goal of the file transfer draft is to allow multiple files/directories to be transferred concurrently, along with additional metadata such as file checksums, descriptions, etc. The fact that this file metadata is listed out of band, and possibly encrypted, keeps file transfers private between two irc clients. The direct connection negotiation still takes place over irc."
The DCC2 protocol will be compatible with the currently used DCC protocol. "While DCC2 is a completely new way to publicize connection data, we have added a compatibility layer to work with historic dcc. In short, we found that many clients ignore unused tokens after historic dcc messages. The DCC2 tokens can be appended to the historic dcc commands, and if both clients support dcc2 then a connection negotiation takes place", Smith explains.
It is expected that during the coming summer the first clients will come with DCC2 at a experimental stage.
There have been 41 comments added to this article.
QuakeNet T-Shirts
Sunday, April 25 2004 by Asmo
QuakeNet made another batch of t-shirts available for their users.
"After a lot of hard work from QuakeNet and clanshirts, we are proud to announce the introduction of some new (black!) T-Shirts.
These T-Shirts can be found here, or by clicking on the 'T-Shirts' link in the navigation bar. QuakeNet makes NO profit from the sale of these T-Shirts", the website of QuakeNet reads.
There have been 0 comments added to this article.
"Operation Fastlink" worldwide anti piracy sweep
Saturday, April 24 2004 by Asmo
With a worldwide action in 10 countries and 27 U.S. states law enforcement seized computers thought of belonging to Internet based software piracy groups.
On the 200 seized computers several hundred thousands of warezed software titles were found. A total of 120 searches were done and 100 suspects arrested, making this the biggest anti-piracy sweep ever done.
Groups which were targeted in this campaign are Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, Class, Project X and APC.
"Once a release group prepares a stolen work for distribution, the material is distributed in minutes to secure, top-level warez servers and made available to a select clientele. From there, within a matter of hours, the pirated works are further distributed throughout the world, ending up on public channels on IRC and peer-to-peer file sharing networks accessible to anyone with Internet access", this press release of the Justice Department of the U.S. reads.
In May 2002 the FBI conducted a similar operation christened operation Buccaneer with law enforcement agencies worldwide.
There have been 8 comments added to this article.
Unrealircd 3.2 final released
Saturday, April 24 2004 by Asmo
"After 3 years and 4 months, Unreal 3.2 is finally released!!!!" codemastr announced on the UnrealIRCD homepage almost with signs of relief.
"This version fixes bugs found since RC2. Anyone running a previous version of 3.2 or any 3.1.X version should definitely upgrade! We would like to thank everyone who helped us get 3.2 out, and we look forward to continuing to develop Unreal after a nice, well deserved vacation :)" codemastr explains.
You can find UnrealIRCD here.
There have been 0 comments added to this article.
New Opera includes IRC client
Friday, April 23 2004 by Asmo
Today the popular alternative multi platform browser Opera will release beta 1 of version 7.50. Rewritten from the ground up the browser has a all new slick interface featuring smaller buttons, as well as two new additions: both an email client as a IRC client.
"Opera now delivers all mainstream Internet applications in a single, seamless product across platforms. In our features power pack, fans will notice significant speed boosting in everything from start-up loading time, page rendering, e-mail search, UI tweaks, to even exiting the application", Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software said.
There have been 4 comments added to this article.
Death to Chat ?
Wednesday, April 21 2004 by Asmo
"I hate online chatting. I hate the IMs (instant messages), the paging, the PMs (personal messages), the private chats, the open chats, the IRC, AIM, ICQ, and MSN Messenger. I particularly despise the small talk that is an important part of chat, and I loathe all the phone SMS chatting and its entire infrastructure."
And he has more to say too! You can read all about it at PC Magazine's website.
There have been 12 comments added to this article.
New Undernet newsletter
Sunday, April 18 2004 by Asmo
"Enjoy the fresh Spring (March/April) edition of the UnderCurrents (the Undernet's newsletter) dedicated to the dynamic and hardworking people of CService, formed back in 1995" the news page of Undernet announced yesterday.
As the announcement already said, this issue is themed CService, the channel service committee of this network. It has a interview with DrCkTaiL, the Cservice co-ordinator, and CService helper Red_Ice explains the working of the committee itself.
There have been 0 comments added to this article.
A PC has 28 virusses on average
Sunday, April 18 2004 by Asmo
"The US net provider EarthLink said it uncovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each PC scanned during the first three months of the year", this article on the BBC website starts.
If you are regurally joining public channels the results of these many infectees must have been shown to you multiple times. Bot's cycling channels, un-invited private messages with URL's or maybe you are even being flooded regurally by a maliscious user who uses infected machines as floodbots on IRC.
Infected machines are becoming a real nuisance on IRC. If we would help our less computer savvy friends and family with installing freeware anti-virus and firewall software, we can help make this world a tad better place to IRC in! ;) Check out the links page for a list of URL's to free security software to start.
There have been 6 comments added to this article.
Darkbot7f2 has been released
Tuesday, April 13 2004 by Asmo
The Darkbot project released a minor update.
"Mainly fixed the google function to work in windows now and also fixed the google function to work again after googled changed somethings on their site after we released 7f1", Darkbot coder Juice told IRCJunkie.
You can find the Windows version here and the *nix version here.
There have been 2 comments added to this article.
Release Candidate Eggdrop 1.6.16
Monday, April 12 2004 by Asmo
Release Candidate 1 of the popular Eggdrop bot has been released.
Some of the more important changes include better support for MacOSX and other non-x86 platforms, support for +E/+I modes (EFNet), support for more exotic symbols for channel ops and the security flaw involving linking with other bots has been fixed.
You can download Eggdrop here. In September 2002 we interviewed the then head of development guppy where he shed some light of what we can expect in version 1.7 of this popular bot.
There have been 9 comments added to this article.
Internet Explorer vunerability being exploited on IRC
Saturday, April 10 2004 by Asmo
It should not be unknown to you that by visiting a specially crafted webpage/image with a vulnerable Internet Explorer you can get infected with a virus. Such vulnerabilities are often abused on IRC by infectees who unknowingly message porn/warez/etc URL's to channels, or to users onjoin.
This article on the Internet News website explains that such an exploit affects all current Internet Explorer versions, while currently no patch is available.
The exploit have been put into W32/Bugbear, the BloodHound.Exploit.6 and the Ibiza Trojan.
It is expected Microsoft will release a cumulative patch next Tuesday. Whether this particular exploit will be included is yet unknown.
If you see users messages an URL's onjoin or spamming them in channels notify a channel operator or network staff. And in all cases of course refrain from visiting the URL in question.
There have been 9 comments added to this article.
New mIRC servers.ini
Saturday, April 10 2004 by Asmo
A new servers.ini is released on the mIRC website. To update your current file simply overwrite it with this version, it will be available immediately (no restarts necessary) in mIRC.
There have been 3 comments added to this article.
Undernet organises the 3rd anual Easter Maze
Saturday, April 10 2004 by Asmo
"It's that time again, folks... The Undernet User Committee is proud to present the third annual Easter Maze, and you are formally invited to participate!" The website of Undernet reports.
This game which proved to be very popular in the past is based on getting the key's of 4 locked room's. The first 10 people to have completed the game will receive eternal recognition by being mentioned in the concluding news article on the Undernet website.
Good luck to the participants!
There have been 4 comments added to this article.
New feature: comments
Friday, April 9 2004 by Asmo
For a few years back we had the feature already available on this website, but removed it later due to lack of use. By request it is back, so you can post your comments again under posted articles. Enjoy!
There have been 24 comments added to this article.
XChat proxy exploit
Tuesday, April 6 2004 by Asmo
All current XChat versions contain a exploit that will give a remote user the rights of the user the client is running under.
The exploit only exists if you enabled and use the Socks5 traversal. The exploit can only performed by someone on the proxy server being used.
"Stack overflow caused by inadequate input validation. The attacker could take control of the User that ran the xchat process", a email to the XChat announce list explains.
The Fedora RPM's at XChat's website have currently been patched, and also the source code for the patch is available there.
Another option is to stop using and disabling Socks5 proxies.
Bersirc sees first release under new owner
Sunday, April 4 2004 by Asmo
Bersirc is one of the more popular freeware IRC clients for the windows platform. In February of this year it changed hands and Nick Copeland became the new owner. We held a interview with Nick shorlty after the sale in February 2004.
The first public release is 2.1 (2.0 was a build from the previous owner), and can be found on Sourceforge.
One of the new features will be a plugin that allows the use of mIRC scripts in Bersirc. In a world dominated by mIRC, and a wide variety of mIRC scripts available possibly a smart move. We asked Nick how he would describe the functionality of the plugin at this stage. "Yes, according to the Bersirc Faq one of the cool new features of Bersirc 2.1 is a mIRC Script plugin. The plugin is supposed to bridge the gap between legacy mIRC users and Bersirc 2.1 users and to make migration simpler. As far as completion, it's in the very earliest stages. Help would be appreciated, if any of you readers are mIRCscript gurus and are not under some NDA."
Users of this client have been waiting for over 2 years for a new version. We asked Nick how the Bersirc community supported him since he bought the sourcecode. "The Bersirc community is very nice. About 30 users idle in the channel #bersirc all the time. Some are more helpful than others. There are some you want to direct to the site for study before framing questions."
On asking if Nick had anything else he would like to say he said he hoped for more income over ads displayed on the site, and PayPal donations. So if you currently use the client, or like to support the work on this client...
Article: SSL, another tool to help your chat be secure
Friday, April 2 2004 by Asmo
If you always wondered what SSL is and can do for you on IRC, then this article should help you get the basics of it. Droolin took the time to explain the basics in this new article in a clear and easy to read fashion.
April fool
Friday, April 2 2004 by Asmo
For those who did not yet got the hint by the name of the posting contributor (April), the NickServ on Undernet? was a April Fool's joke =)
Carefully setup by one of the lead coders on Undernet, Isomer, it fooled many, including staff of the network. The amount of traffic it generated towards the fake NickServ page on the CService website caused for brief moments of inaccessibility due to the amount of requests for the page.
IRC101 compiled a nice list off all the April fools jokes this year.
See you next year!
Operation Fastlink Suspect Pleads Guilty
4 June 2008
Back in April 2004 we reported about a worldwide anti-piracy sweep named "Operation Fastlink" where members of the APC group (and other warez groups) were being arrested.
Mark Shumaker, 21 years-old, was a member of the APC group and also led the Apocalypse Crew's Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel. The group specialized in releasing music not yet available to the public.
Shumaker has pleaded guilty and faces up to 5 years in jail and a USD 250,000 fine. Fifteen other members have been convicted already.
Brad Buckles, executive vice president for the RIAA; "For the first time ever, a criminal online music piracy case went to trial, and the jury rendered a swift and unanimous verdict. [...] The crimes committed here -- as well as the harm to the music community -- are severe, and so are the consequences. We congratulate and thank the U.S. Attorney's office for its work on this case."
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