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Monthly Archives: January 2005

Undernet looses CService member

“Today I received a query with the sad news that John aka jwpara has passed away”, CService coordinator LordLuke announced today on the Undernet news page.

JwPara has undergone surgery a few months ago. “Actually I expected his return every day now” LordLuke continues.

“I joined our org around the same time as John and have always loved working and talking with him. He’ll be seriously missed by me and a lot of other people from the Undernet community.”

Those who like to express their feelings can do so on the Undernet forum where a thread has been opened in the memory of JwPara.

Negative press on the topic of IRC

It seems that Paul Mutton (jibble.org, PieSpy bot, O’Reilly’s “IRC Hacks”) and I share a mutual opinion on how negative IRC is constantly portrayed in the regular press.

“… It always gets me riled when journalists and news reporters persistently portray IRC as some kind of hacker’s playground, where illegal software and and credit card numbers are used as a virtual currency. I set myself the mission of disproving this portrayal”, Paul starts in this article on his website.

Paul explains how IRC is being used in academic usages (I personally manage two IRC channels which is in use by spaceweather scientists and enthusiasts) and the open source community for example.

Paul describes how he has monitored the 60 largest channels on a group of networks. By nature these large channels are often involved into illegal sharing of files. “Within a few seconds, my IRC client was bombarded by a stream of messages advertising illegal unlicensed software, mp3s and the latest movies – items known collectively by illegal file sharers as “warez”", Paul described his join one of these channels.

After doing this research Paul has to agree has the results of his research showed that the channels he visited mainly exist because of illegal activities.

“IRC is a big, dangerous city full of crime. I just happen to live with a bunch of people in one of the nice streets in the suburbs”, Paul ends.

Paul’s article is also being discussed on SlashDot. Thanks to Mite and Ed for pointing me out this article!

GameSurge tests new IPv6 code in ircu

“Our development committee is currently testing our new IPv6 IRC server located at ipv6.gamesurge.net. If you have an IPv6 connection you might want to download this patch for Mirc that will allow you to connect to GameSurge via the IPv6 protocol”, the GameSurge website reports.

IPv6 support is one of the new features of ircu2.10.12, the IRC deamon which is also in use on the Undernet network.

We asked Entrope, coordinator of the ircu2.10.12 development, how the test was going so far. “We found a moderate number of problems very early in the test, but that is typical for rolling out so much new code.  In the past two weeks, we have seen only one minor problem.  It is specific to a GameSurge patch, and should be fixed by the current version of that patch.”

The users have been excited over the support for IPv6 “Between IPsec and other new features of IPv6, we think the benefits of IRC over IPv6 outweigh the possible problems”, Entrope explains.

In the IRC community there have been some concerns about the big ammount of IP addresses users have the access to with IPv6. Entrope about this issue: “The clone checking code in ircu should prevent that; the new code works on larger blocks than single IPs.  There are a few cases that it does not currently address, since those require information about end-user netblock sizes, but those should be rare and can be handled as they arise.”

GameSurge is planning to setup a second server testing this IPv6 code, and naturally, when ircu2.10.12 is being released it will be rolled out to all GameSurge servers. Also Undernet has plans to test the new ircu with the IPv6 code.

The new ircu also contains some other interesting changes. The format of the configuration file will be simplified and is based on ircd-hybrid’s one, as is the DNS resolver, new channel modes that will automatically op a user who joins with a specific key, aliases for /X and /chanserv type of commands, and

IRC in the News: DDoS'er sentenced

The article “Canadian teen sentenced in Randex virus case” on ITBusiness.ca reports about a 16-year-old Mississauga, Ont. who pleaded guilty ‘of mischief against data and fraudulent use of a computer.

In the same case, a 16-year-old from Scotland was sentenced to jail for 6 months. He created Randex, a virus which have infected machines connect to an IRC server so its dronerunner can issue commands like initiate DDoS attacks.

The article ends with the next paragraph: “Although the conviction ends the RCMP and Scotland Yard’s Randex investigation, Lonnee said an American fugitive used the virus to commit DDoS attacks in the United States. The FBI is currently pursuing the fugitive, who is believed to be somewhere in Morocco, he said.”

Which brings up something we reported on in the past, which can be found here…

Another popular IRC website cracked

“If some of you thought mIRC Resources had a somewhat peculiar decoration earlier today, you were right” the webmaster of  mIRC-Egg.net reports on his site.

The website was defaced and showed a nazi symbol. We asked webmaster Bop how the defacement took place. “The actual defacement utilized a lacking input checking in the backend application for the site, PostNuke. This weakness has been exploited in the popular forum application phpBB previously (as a side note, we do not use for any part of the site).”

“A more thorough scan of the access log file shows a large number of similarly formatted GET strings during the days leading up to the defacement, and there have been attempts since as well, suggesting that any affected site should take steps to close down some of the holes.”

Bop also hinted to close the site, too “not waste time on this kinda nonsense.” We asked Bop if he would seriously consider doing so. “As far as shutting down the site, that’s something that inevitably becomes an issue from time to time if you spend enough effort on it without achieving whatever you’re trying to achieve at the moment. [...] Certainly I have no intent of doing so due to mere defacements, as these are nuisances more than actual problems.”

“And of course, on the flipside, I really should have updated the backend code long since, but there it is. It is all too easy to forget that IRC at the end of the day, for most of us still is a hobby, and lest we make it more, it should not have more impact on us than that, either.”