OK, this is going to be one of those rants I spit out from time to time. You know I love IRC, I use it to chat, help other users to chat and use it as a base for scientific groups because of its excellent ways to automate tasks with the help of bots. IRC evolves, new functionality is being added almost on a daily basis. And that should be a good thing. But I have to wonder, is IRC becoming too complicated for new users?
Bringing criminals to justice takes time, a lot of time. Back in October 2004 we reported about the arrest of Fyle/Anatoly, who was causing havoc on the Darkmyst network, as well as many others.
Fyle/Anatoly, named Richard C. Honour of Kenmore, Washington and 30-years-old, was arrested in suspicion of writing viruses which were being spread by trying to trick IRC users in using malicious links. A total of 21 networks had to deal with it and prevent innocent users from being infected.
The goal of the virus was to collect personal information in order to abuse for financial gain.
Over the past month GameSurge (ranked #9 by SearchIRC.com) have started to actively recruit new support staff. IRC-Junkie finds out what it takes to become an active member on this network.
The end of January the network posted an article on their website requesting people from European timezones to apply for support staff member. Last week a second request went out for all timezones.
“We originally requested only European applicants because were having problems supporting our userbase from those time zones”, Human Resources Manager Michael Rossi explained to IRC-Junkie. ” We received a decent response from the Europeans. We hired 10 European staff members. After we hired them, however, we realized at that point that we could also use some more help in our American time zones.”
“To further the goal of encouraging good security habits, GameSurge has teamed up with Panda Software to host the GameSurge/Panda Software Security Giveaway”, the GameSurge website announced.
Alacard2k (IRC Operator and Support Operator) explained to IRC-Junkie that originally it was Panda Software that contacted the network for advertising possibilities on their website. “As a general rule we don’t place advertisements on our website, so I spoke to them about some alternatives. Eventually we settled on an idea that would be beneficial to everyone, a giveaway.”
“What huh? Another platform evangelist?”, I can hear you ask. No, don’t worry, although, with the lack of realism some computers owners you might have to worry.
Mac OSX users long thought they were immune to attacks targeting their systems. This year however has seen quiet a few attacks towards OSX systems that opened the eyes of many ‘into’ OSX. In November Apple patched 31 vulnerabilities including a 0-day exploit.
Since then, more vulnerabilities have been found, including malware trying to exploit these.
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