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Monthly Archives: April 2005

IRCn Not Quite Dead Yet

Peace & Protection, aIRC and IRCn, just a few of all around scripts that build up a large userbase and respect in the IRC community over the years, but have stopped development a few years back. From one of them however, I got an email a few days back.

“Just as an FYI, we are not quite ready to officially declare ircN a dead project.  Granted we know the past couple years have been disappointing, but only because we’ve continuously leaned on a single individual to carry on the bulk of the project”, slakker told to IRC-Junkie in a reaction. Slakker and the current developers have been on the IRCn team for years and are planning to get back into action now.

Among the developments are the website that has been re-designed and the release of beta versions. “A lot of work still needs to be done, but we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to accomplish something that will live up to the name ircN has made for itself.”

"Oops!" at Undernet

A little typo in a GLine caused major effects on the Undernet network today.

The result of the typo was that the entire network got GLined with the reason set for the user the GLine was meant for: infected! Advertising infecting web sites. Clean this computer! http://www.moosoft.com http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ )

As a result of the events the entire network fell apart, and servers had to be reconnected one-by-one. On the IRC statistics website NetSplit.de Undernet dissapeared completely from the Top 25 list, where it normally can be found in the top 3.

The error was a combination of a cut&paste error and a never before seen bug in the services an Undernet admin told IRC-Junkie in a reaction.

Maybe one good thing came out of this however, as many people might have checked their computers for malware!

QuakeNet permanently GLines T-dialin

“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.”

Naturally, QuakeNet did tried to contact the ISP in question in order to try and resolve abusive issues, but the ISP lacked cooperation in handling the abuse reports. “There have been numerous emails sent in the past, to no avail. However, I believe a staff member did manage to corner a T-dialin employee at CeBIT this year, so we’ll have to wait and see whether or not this helps matters”, Magpie explains.

Finally, Magpie explains that if ISPs would assign users unique IPs, it would be much easier to handle abusers.  “This sort of thing causes us no end of problems as an IRC network, with users of particular ISPs able to simply rejoin with a new IP within seconds. I’m sure you’ll agree that having to ban large swathes of users in order to take out one abuser is a far from ideal solution.”