[Asmo]

DALnet celebrates 10th anniversary

Tuesday, July 20 2004 by Asmo

Ten year's ago, it was the person with the nick dalvenjah who started the network which partly got named after him. Today dalvenjah had a few words to say in a press release on the DALnet website:

"As the placidly humming network clicks over the 10-year mark, one thing strikes me -- It's still running strong, and people are still using it. I'm amazed and impressed that DALnet has made it this far; it's a testament to all the people who've poured blood, sweat, tears, and IRC juice into the network, keeping it going through strife, denial-of-service attacks, and policy changes."

"I'd like to thank every staff member for the work they do for DALnet; it wouldn't be possible without every single one of them."

"I'd also like to thank every user -- whether you've been around since 1994, or whether you first joined yesterday, you really are part of what makes DALnet great."

"Here's to another ten years!""
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DALnet connectivity

Wednesday, July 14 2004 by Asmo

On places such as the DALnet mailing lists and the DALnet Usenet forum, users regularly complain about their problems while connecting to the network, caused by attacks which still occur from time to time.

The attacks forced DALnet to implement some changes in the way the network operates. One change is restricting access to user-servers in the form of "clouds". DALnet Ahnberg explained in a reaction to IRCJunkie: "what I mostly refer to with "clouds" is that we use the powers of BGP to limit announcement of some servers. This means that it isn't globally routed, instead it only covers (for example) an ISP and its peers. Or an Internet Exchange and whomever wishes to peer with us through that Internet Exchange."

"Due to this setup we can also let several servers use the same IP to simplify for the users to find their way onto them, much like the DNS root servers has done lately; so just connecting to irc.dal.net will put you on one of these servers if you can reach it at all."

This method is not planned for the whole network however, but is meant to complement the existing network. "We are always working to come up with new methods, and it is a lot of fun doing it. DALnets routing team works hard with new theories and ideas to further enhance the network server-wise" Ahnberg explains.

"It is unfortunate that we do not have the means to guarantee 100% uptime for everyone. If there are problems to get online when you try, please try a few more servers or wait a while and try later again", Ahnberg concludes.
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jIRCii beta 10 released

Sunday, July 11 2004 by Asmo

"jIRCii beta 10 has been released. Beta 10 is mostly bug fixes and polish. Tab completion now completes /commands as well as nicknames", jIRCii coder Raffi announced in an email to IRCJunkie.

"jIRCii has been in the works for a long time now", Raffi explains. "jIRC will have its 3rd birthday on July 28. I released a beta to some folks on irc on July 28, 2001."

Raffi is expecting to release a final 1.0 release in about 2 months. "I'm waiting until some of my more vocal users think its ready to be considered a 1.0."

jIRCii is a cross platform IRC client coded in Java and fully scriptable with the Sleep language, which looks like Perl.
There have been 1 comments added to this article.

mIRC 6.16 released

Thursday, July 8 2004 by Asmo

Today version 6.16 of the popular mIRC client got released.

"With this release we hope to address the most important comments, and remarks we received after the release of the previous version. We tried to focus on fixing things like the (few) freeze/gpf issues relating to SJIS/JIS and while/continue/break statements in scripts, as well as a handful of others - making the mIRC 6 series very stable." The website of the client reports.

One of the more major reasons to release it was the presence of a SJIS/JIS bug that could let a malicious user freeze another user's mIRC client. SJIS/JIS deals with the display of Japanese characters onscreen, and is disabled by default in mIRC.
Using a specially crafted privmsg, such as //msg $chr(1) $+ PING 000 $+ $chr(160) $+ 0 $+ $chr(1) the client of the victim would end up in a loop and freeze. Reports of this exploit have been sent to IRCJunkie several dozen times over the past few weeks.

Other changes, predominantly bug and stability fixes as well, can be found in the whatsnew.txt.

You can download mIRC here.
There have been 50 comments added to this article.

AfterNET suffers from DDoS

Thursday, July 8 2004 by Asmo

"The denial of service on our network has increased (2.6gigabits/s), and we cannot afford to maintain services. I think I speak for every user, admin, and ircop when I say this sucks. For those who wish to discuss on irc, we have setup an afternet refugee channel on the undernet IRC network #AfterNET2 please join us there.. I have disabled the afternet DNS to protect whats left of our admin's hosts and wallets", the website of AfterNET reports.

Sofar, one server has been delinked permanently. The sponsor was a smaller ISP who could not afford a DDoS attack in these quantities.

We tried to contact AfterNET for a reaction but got no responce sofar.

Update (10 july): Today I got a responce on my request too answer some questions I sent to AfterNET the 7th which are now answered by Dave Griffith (nick Tater) who is a server admin on AfterNET.

Is there anything known regarding to whom might be attacking at the moment? "Not at this time. We are working to scan logs and report offending ip's to CERT , but we don't expect much resolve from them."

Does AfterNET get attacked with DoSS frequently? "I wouldn't Say Frequently but it has been happening a lot more lately. DDOS is becoming a more prevelant way of venting one's anger I suppose."

If so, is it known then who is attacking and why? "We have our guesses , but at this point they are nothing more than hunches. We would like them to realize that we are just trying to provide a free service and that whatever the issue that angered them enough to hit us like this is, we can certainly work through it."

Anything else you would like to say? "Yes. DDOS is a horrible and detrimental tool. Especially when it's someones livelyhood. We have guys that own only 3-4 servers that are co-lo somewhere and that is their living. They did nothing except give of those capabilities to provide a free chat service, and a few have to spoil it for the whole bunch. Also to the ISP's (of the servers) , They need to support their customers better and realize that you sometimes get DDOS'ed "just because" i have recieved letters from my very own ISP threatening to boot my servers from their network if I get a couple more DDOS like I did on JUL 6th. We Don't pay them good money to have them tell us "too bad" Also we would like to point out our website for the latest news on the network and it's status at www.afternet.org"
There have been 4 comments added to this article.

Domain conflict results in suspended accounts at QuakeNet

Tuesday, July 6 2004 by Asmo

"Due to a security issue with barrysworld.com email addresses, all accounts with such an email address have been locked. To unlock your account, and begin using it again, you must specify a new email address to use", the website of QuakeNet reports.

The domain in question points to a Dutch web design company named Media Monks. We got in contact with Terrence Koeman, who is one of the owners of the company, and asked him for a reaction.

"Barrysworld was a gaming company and sponsored a cluster for QuakeNet", Terrence Koeman started. "When Barrysworld went bankrupt I bought the domain, and yes, in theory I could request the pass for all accounts who still use a @barrysworld.com address."

Terrence Koeman, also known as raphidae on IRC, and an old helper on QuakeNet, found out the domain was available for sale. He bought the domain for a client who was having Media Monks design a website for a new Dutch online paying system. Since then the company changed the name of the paying system to "Wally's Card".

The seller of the domain however has a whole other story about the sale of the domain. "I never sold the domain, was never approached and signed a sworn statement to that fact at the NHTCU (National High Tech Crime Unit or whatever it is called in Canary Wharf)", Antonia Covelli (nick: DBs) says in a forum post at FreddysHouse.com.

"The domain was illegally obtained by identity theft and I would stand up in any real court, not some pissy WIPO hearing where the judge was sat in Australia, and swear the same", he continues. "Also, as soon as the company went into liquidation, ALL ASSETS belonged to the administrators of the company, not me. So I could not legally sell it even if I wanted to."

The WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) is an international organization where disputes like these can be brought to, and anyone buying a domain signs to agree for them to handle any disputes regarding domain names. A complaint has been filed at the WIPO over the case, but the complaint got denied by them.

"I am willing to confirm DBS story", says a former BarrysWorld employee and shareholder who asked to remain unnamed. "I'm willing to lend official support to DBs' cause if he needs or requests it, but I'm not willing to enter into public debate on the subject."

The dispute yet continues over forums. Brooky, who started the topic on FreddysHouse.com, is interested in buying the domain and having it pointed too FreddysHouse.com. Negotiations on this sale are yet ongoing.
There have been 5 comments added to this article.

Unreal 3.2.1 released

Tuesday, July 6 2004 by Asmo

Today version Unreal 3.2.1 has been released of this popular IRCd.

This version fixes a serious security issue where it is possible for malicious users to get the real IP off another user who is using the +x usermode which deforms his host.

"It is possible to recover the keys of several irc networks by knowing only one clear text and hashed IP, and another hashed IP", this post on SecurityFocus explains. "We have successfully writen a program that bruteforces one bit at a time. It takes less than one second to do that on a pentium4 1.8ghz."

Besides this, also new features have been added, such as the possibility for the Windows version to use modules, a DCCALLOW module like in use on DALnet, a new ban type that will stop an user to change his nick and CIDR support.
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Spanish dronerunner jailed

Tuesday, July 6 2004 by Asmo

Spanish backdoor writer López Hinarejos, 26 year-old, is off for jail for two years. He coded the Cabrotor backdoor virus which is said to have infected 100000 machines.

After infection the machines would connect to an IRC server where the dronerunner would have access to the personal details stored on those computers, and use them in a DDoS attack.
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XGoogle closes down

Monday, July 5 2004 by Asmo

"XGoogle is being closed by Google Corporate Crows" we can read on the XGoogle website.

"They've seen its powerful trademarked name in danger. LOL fuckin' bullshit. domain hijacking. they don't give a crap about if it's non-profit project, they claim i'm a bad-faith man", webmaster dalok0kat continues.

We tried to contact XGoogle for a few questions, but have had no response sofar.

XGoogle provided a service to search over IRC for certain topics, much like the service SearchIRC provides.

Update: The XGoogle website have now been updated with correspondence between Google and XGoogle regarding the subject.

Update: Webmaster dalok0kat of XGoogle responded with an answer to our question why he is not continuing the website under a new domain name. "I have to spend some time to do it, and this summer i'l be very busy, i won't have holidays huh. i'll try to continue when i'm a bit more free."
There have been 42 comments added to this article.

New Undernet Newsletter

Monday, July 5 2004 by Asmo

"May/June edition of the UnderCurrents, the Undernet newsletter, is available from our website" says cArLiLLoS on the Undernet news page.

You can find the current issue here.
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XChat 2.0.10 released

Friday, July 2 2004 by Asmo

"2.0.10 is out!" is screamed of the XChat website.

The major (only?) change in this version is the tab completion behavior, as explained in this forum post.

As usual only the source and Fedora version are up to date to the 2.0.10 version, the Windows version will follow later. You can download XChat here.
There have been 2 comments added to this article.
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