[Asmo]

Criten.net`s problems never ceases to end..

Sunday, January 19 2003 by Hardy

The past weeks have been hard for Criten.net, a network that used to have 4 out of 5 of the biggest channels on IRC accourding to stats on netsplit.de.

At the same time all of their servers including some of their "hidden" hubs have been under constant DDoS attacks they have also had to deal with struggles in their administration. Some servers and their admins have been removed from the network due to suspicion of activity not tolerated by the network administration.

Going from 13 000 users two weeks ago and 13 servers the network now only have 4 servers linked at the moment, and only two of them are client servers. Also, the services database is currently not available because the server it was on is null routed due to the attacks. Hopefully, they will get it back by this weekend.

There is plan of a restructuring of the network both administrative and technical. The technical changes which is still under discussion by the ones left is hidden links to hide servers more to avoide DoS attacks and halfops that might help their users to easier manage channels.

AOL ban lifted on Gamesnet

Saturday, January 18 2003 by Asmo

After the drastic measurement of a few days back, AOL has been responsive towards Gamesnet regarding solving abuse issues. Gamesnet had to resort to the banning of all of AOL due to this ISP not handling reports of abusive users sent in by Gamesnet administration, as explained in a news article on this website the 16th of this month.

Since then AOL have given a direct contact for Gamesnet to sent abuse reports to, on which Gamesnet are now awaiting actions. The banning of the whole Gamesnet domain in AOL's email system was due to oversensitive filters on the email servers from AOL.

IRCJunkie have been trying to get into contact with Gamesnet for questions, but we were unfortunally left without a responce (rather ironic).

New DALnetizen issue

Saturday, January 18 2003 by Asmo

DALnetizen's editor Curve sent a email to the DALnet mailinglist announcing a new issue of their ezine. Focussed once more on the ongoing DDoS attacks to the network.

In the new issue Curve reprints the open letter she had sent to IRCJunkie a few days ago, as well as a FAQ page with a list of questions DALnet staff are getting reguraly. Curve also let us know that there are #dalnethelp channels opened on both EFNet and Undernet (the Undernet channel also has DALnet staff) to answer your questions.

And as usual she tries to explain the importance of having computers secured. Computer users who regulary update their computer with patches (Windows Update), run a antivirus program and firewall are very hard to hack and abuse in DDoS attacks. You and me know this, but I think if we all care about IRC, we also must spread this around to our friends and family. Why should someone who doesnt leave his house without locking the door and windows leave his computer wide open for others to hack and abuse?

Weekly virus report

Friday, January 17 2003 by Asmo

After a storm of new virusses over the last few weeks, its relatively calm with only 1 virus. But it is also a week where it has been virtually impossible to connect to a popular IRC network, DALnet, due to the effects of people being infected with a virus which allows the cracker to use those machines in a DDoS attack. In a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) you are using hundreds, or even thousands of computer who all will send bogus requests to a single server, who in turn will be unable to operate in a normal manner.

W32.Sahay.A@mm is our only IRC related virus for this week. As the name already suggests (mm), it is a mass mailing virus who uses Outlook as its prime way of spreading itself. Next it will try to infect all the *.exe files found in the download directory of mIRC. But due to bugs in the code it may actually corrupt those files and crash the computer.

As always, make sure you have an up to date anti virus product running, they even come for free! Check out the links page for a list of free and commercial anti virus products. If you like to do a one time, and free as well online scan, then try out House Call.

200 hours community work for trading childporn on IRC

Friday, January 17 2003 by Asmo

The German police gave the New Zealand police a hand with arresting Martin Nelson Silby, inhabitant of North Island town of Paeroa in New Zealand. He was a channel operator of a channel specialised in the trading of child pornography, using nicks like "Servin" and "Serviz".

Martin Nelson Silby pleaded guilty on 12 of the charges under the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act, which in New Zealand also covers child pornography. He is being sentenced to do 200 hours of community work.

New version of MAC's client, SnaK

Friday, January 17 2003 by cArLiLLoS

A new version of the Irc client for Macintosh machines is now available at its website ...and it comes with new features !! Mac users will be very delighted with the new addings in the 4.9 SnaK version.

the waiting was worthwhile?? I'm sure it was: actions has been added to many events, AppleScript properties expanded to many settings, Tile-mode view resizing optimised, many commands enhanced with new flags and options, $connect/$listen/$curpos crash fixed, event handlers bug fixed and many others new features, changes and fixes which you can read in the History log.

Kent Sorensen's Irc client has a deserved place within the good Mac Irc clients.

Gamesnet bans entire AOL.com

Thursday, January 16 2003 by Asmo

The abusive behaviour of a few users using AOL as their ISP and the lack of responce from AOL in trying to solve the matters made the administration of Gamesnet decide to ban the entire American ISP, as explained on the website of the network.

On top of that AOL apparently made a descision to block all email comming from the authentication service on Gamesnet, AuthServ. This will make it impossible for AOL users to use the networks services.

Gamesnet now hopes that subscribers of AOL will contact the ISP and complain, hoping these issues will be solved.

It is not the first time a major IRC network has to ban an entire major ISP from their network due to unwillingness from the ISP side in handling abuse. Also EFNet and DALnet had to take such actions against AOL, and Undernet for example K:lined the Canadian Videotron ISP to protect their users against the many floodbots who where operating on open proxies from Videotron subscribers.

Some news from DALnet

Tuesday, January 14 2003 by Asmo

Well, a single day after my post that DALnet remains silent on my requests for some information, Curve, admin of tiscali.dal.net and editor of the DALnet ezine replied me with a long (and very positive) responce which I will repost in full.

It's no secret that DALnet has suffered massive attacks recently, far greater than anything we've seen before. We've been ravaged by DDoS attacksin the gbps range, attacks which are not just crippling our IRC servers, but causing disruption to the providers who host those servers. Given that fact, and the tendency for gossip in these situations, I know that some people are saying 'DALnet is dead'.

Well it's not.

At the moment most of our client servers are down, but they are by no means 'out'. It is, however, a fact that while these attacks continue it would be unwise for us to bring back all our servers and possibly cause disruption to our sponsors' networks. I know some people will find that hard to understand, or perhaps even paradoxical, but there really is more at stake here than one IRC network. I think a fair few staff from other IRC networks understand this, because we've had a lot of help from them during this time, and that we're very grateful for. Why do I say that more than DALnet is at stake? Well, because the more these people amass herds of infected computers (botnets) to attack IRC servers with, the more service providers will quickly come to the conclusion that hosting an IRC server is a liability. All ready many providers simply won't countenance hosting an IRC server and if this random vandalism continues, the harder it will be for non-profit IRC to continue in any reasonable form at all. That could jeapordise the future for *all* IRC networks, not simply DALnet.

So, what are DALnet doing right now? Well, it could be said that, in a way, these criminals have given us a golden opportunity to look at how DALnet is run and see where we can improve. Whilst our client servers are down, we've been busy brainstorming on what we can do to make our network more robust and to deliver a more pleasant user-experience in general. Contrary to what has been said on another IRC news site, these discussions have continued amicably both on the DALnet server administrators list, and with lots of fantastic input from Operators on the general staff mailing list. Some of the ideas tabled we're exploring and testing, and i'm sure that the best of them will be implemented. Whilst this is happening we are, of course, also persuing investigations into the people who are engaging in these criminal acts against our network's servers and the networks who host them.

I should expect that the biggest question on everyone's minds right now is when DALnet's service will return to normal. That is, unfortunately, not a question I have an immediate answer for since we do need to stop these continuing attacks first. I'm confident, however, that we will do that since the radius of interest in them has spread far beyond the realms of DALnet and IRC. I'm also confident that, when we are able to open our doors fully to the public again, they will return to find a refreshed and vibrant network which has returned to its roots of being an innovative and friendly network. A network that's more concerned with quality than quantity, and a network which is looking towards the future rather than resting on the laurels of the past.

Lastly, I know that the staff of DALnet have found the messages of support and thanks which have flooded in from well-wishers and users alike very heart-warming. It is this support which spurs us on and makes us determined, not only to survive this situation, but to go on to be a network they can be proud of again. To those people, we give our upmost thanks.

Emma/Curve
AA: tiscali.dal.net

DALnet update

Tuesday, January 14 2003 by Asmo

Lately I am getting a lot of responces from users like this one from DJ-;

"I'm wondering (as well as a few thousand other ppl), what has happened to Dalnet. I know they have been bombarded with DDos attacks, but they have been down now for almost a week? Even their website is gone???"

The problem is that DALnet still remains silent and wishes not to reply to any questions answered by me, or any other news site. Rumours go around that the DALnet domain name is for sale (most likely just that, rumours), and IRCNews.com reported yesterday that internal fights take place within the DALnet administration.

One small plus point is that nick names and channel names will not expire as long as the DDoS attacks take place, as xPsycho (services coder and executive board member) explained in a email to the DALnet services mailinglist.

Lirva worm is spreading fast

Monday, January 13 2003 by Asmo

We already reported about this virus in our weekly virus report last friday, W32.Lirva.*@mm is a virus that is now in the wild circulating in several modified versions. On IRC it will try to spread by spamming a URL to users hoping they will click it, after which they will be infected by making use of vunerabilities in Internet Explorer.

The maker of anti-virus products Panda Software have moved the worm to the third place in their list of top virusses. If you happen to be infected with Lirva, Panda Software made a tool available for free to help you get rid of it.

DownKaos chats with opers

Monday, January 13 2003 by Asmo

It is time for a second what with a oper from DownKaos. This time he chats with scuzzy, admin on the anime oriented Aniverse network.

In his series DownKaos has informal chats with opers, to get to the person behind the O:line.

Free Software Foundation pressured openprojects.org to change domain?

Sunday, January 12 2003 by Asmo

Last year, 14th August to be exact, the OpenProjects.org IRC network changed its name to Freenode.net. The networks aim is to be a home for coders of free software & open source software.

Over the last few weeks several people contatced IRCJunkie with a story that the Free Software Foundation(FSF for short) would have pushed this name change before it would accept this IRC network as its "official IRC network". Some users publically made their opinions available as this user did on Retards.org:

"12 days after they changed their name from openprojects.org to freenode.org Gnu announced that it would make freenode it's official irc network. Seems likely that those things are related. Stallman's teeth grind at the mention of 'open' and I'm sure openprojects wanted the help from GNU, so they changed their name. There's no way that GNU would endorse it if it was called openprojects."

The Freenode.net website has an FAQ up wich explains the name change as follows:

"We picked the name for several reasons. First, it suggests a non-hierarchical network. We provide facilities to projects that find our philosophy and approach worthwhile, and we're here to help with problems and to encourage our users to interact in a relaxed and cooperative fashion. The users run the projects and we do our best to maintain a congenial and useful atmosphere. In the best tradition of linked-list implementations, just request a channel and we'll allocate you a free node.

Second, the name freenode brings to mind the best qualities of free and open source software. That seemed to us to be a very good thing. "

Those are two completely different explanations on the name change, which does indeed rather sounds fishy. So we got in contact with Rob Levin, President and Executive Director, Peer-Directed Projects Center Head of staff, Freenode, and asked him if the FSF forced or pressured in any way the name change.

"Not at all. The FSF is a very principle-oriented organization, and they did want us to make our commitment to free software clear. My impression is that they liked the new name a lot, and that was certainly a factor in our adopting it. But they did not suggest that we change our domain name, nor did they suggest the name 'freenode.'"

On the timing of events Rob Levin explained, "The Free Software Foundation did not pressure us toward making a name change. We started talking with them about making OPN (OpenProjects.net, ed) the home of the GNU project in late 2001, and they'd seemed interested. Due to the press of personal obligations, I'd been unable to pursue it until mid-2002."

Rob Levin does however have a explanation on where these rumours are comming from. Recent discussions on fund raising have gotten quite political and heated, cuasing friction between groups. Rob Levin explains;

"When I found myself unemployed in mid-2001, I thought about the time I'd devoted to the network, which started out as linpeople.org in 1995 and later became openprojects.net. It's never been a lucrative activity from a financial standpoint."

And things have gotten worse at that time for him, as loosing his job in April of 2002 almost lost him his appartment and car. With a family to take care of defenitally not something to envy for. The OpenProjects.net was unfunded at that time, and unable to provide Rob Levin with a basic income to continue his work on the project.

"It's not very conventional to ask the users of an IRC network to help you out of a jam. But the network I pushed to create, that I've been running since its inception, exists to provide services to the community, I reasoned that it wouldn't hurt to ask some of the people who benefitted from that network to help. So I did, and some of them felt my personal contribution was worthy of support. As a result, we were able to keep our apartment for a couple of months and avoid losing our car while I continued looking for employment", Rob Levin explains.

It was at this point that friction started to excist between several groups. Groups of old OpenProject.org staff members, etc. People thought it was unethical that Rob Levin had asked money to support himself, rather then ask support for the project. Over time things turned out better for Rob Levin personally, and discussions were started to raise funds for the project;

"The fundraising campaign was an experiment, and not a successful one. I'm glad we tried it, but there was a lot of "push back." Interestingly, many of the complaints came from the same people who told us that it was inappropriate for me to ask for personal help and that any funds collected should go to the nonprofit. Regardless, at that point I decided that fundraising on IRC was just not very workable or effective. So we took the advice of folks who were much more experienced in fundraising than we are and ended the initial campaign, formally apologizing to anyone who might have been offended in the process."

Right now funds are as they had been collected up to that point, at just 2000$, not enough to start any new projects. New ways of fund raising are being worked on, as Rob Levin explains;

"But we're a bit farther along. We've heard back from the IRS on our 501(c)(3) application, and we'll be making an announcement on that as soon as a few more organization details have been taken care of. Freenode seems to be running relatively well for the moment, even if PDPC hasn't been able to start working on any other projects yet. Things are going okay."

New server.ini for mIRC

Sunday, January 12 2003 by Asmo

For those people who like their servers.ini to be up to date, its update time again. You can download the file right here.

More DDoS attacks on DALnet

Saturday, January 11 2003 by Asmo

As Curve, editor of the DALnet ezine explains in a email to the DALnet mailinglist;

"For the past few days DALnet has, yet again, been crippled by massive Distributed Denial of Service attacks. We have, at times, been left with no client servers for you, our users, to connect to. For that we can only apologise, and assure you that DALnet administration is working with law enforcement and service providers to try and stem this tide of electronic vandalism."

Next on she explains how ordinary computers from you and me are used as attacking machines in such DDoS attacks, and how such attacks could have been prevented if the users would only secure their machine;

"Please remember, these sorts of attacks cannot happen if each and every person were to ensure that their computers are secure by disabling any un-necessary services (file sharing etc), and by running a good anti-virus program and
firewall."

Finally she tries to encourage everyone to report suspicious activity to law enforcement agencies, and if you may find any channels full of suspicious bots, report them to a IRC operator. These IRC operators can usually be found in the networks helpchannels, often these channels are listen in the MOTD when you connect. You can retrieve them later on with using the command /motd.

Weekly virus report

Friday, January 10 2003 by Asmo

It's been another very bussy week. No less then 8 new IRC related virusses are reported on Symantect Security Responce.

W32.Kwbot.B.Worm is using the filesharing program KaZaA to spread itself. It has a IRC client build in and connects to IRC and sits in a channel to wait for commands from the cracker. He can update the trojan, perform DDoS attacks, send the trojan into other channel to try and infect others, and even remove itself completely from the registry.

W32.HLLW.Backzat.C is a virus that spreads itself through all possible means, Outlook, filesharing programs suck as KaZaA, Grokster, eDonkey2000, Morpheus, and ICQ and mIRC. It will also unable any protection software on your computer (antivirus and firewall programs).

W32.HLLW.Stiq is one we dont have to worry a whole lot for, the coder of this one introduced a bug that will prevent the virus from spreading completely through mIRC and Outlook. How convenient!

Backdoor.Ohpass is another backdoor that uses IRC to take commands from the cracker. As usual with these backdoor, a registry entry will be made in order for the backdoor to be started up on Windows reboot.

W32.Lirva.A@mm & W32.Lirva.C@mm have gotten quite some attention the last few days, as this virus is very rapidately spreading throughout the Internet. It is spread using mass mailing, IRC, ICQ and KaZaA. It will disable protection software. And it will send any cached dialup networking passwords to the cracker. Once the user is infected it will download BackOrifice (well known backdoor), and install it when it is downloaded. For more information, read this article on The Star.

Backdoor.Deftcode is another trojan that connects to IRC and waits for commands from the cracker.

Backdoor.Cybspy opens a port, so the cracker can enter your computer at will. It will also connect to IRC, where it waits for commands executed by the cracker. It contains a keyboard logger so the cracker could grab any usernames/password combinations and other private information.

As always, make sure you have an up to date anti virus product running, they even come for free! Check out the links page for a list of free and commercial anti virus products. If you like to do a one time, and free as well online scan, then try out House Call.

DALnet to Undernet HOWTO

Thursday, January 9 2003 by Asmo

A lot of IRC networks see users comming from DALnet seeking a new stable home to chat with their friends. With the switch the users have lots of questions like; how do I keep my nick? How can I register a channel?

Undernet help channels have seen these questions asked in such ammount, that they decided to add a "DALnet to Undernet HOWTO" on their newspage.

New ircu release 2.10.11.04

Wednesday, January 8 2003 by Asmo

It is time for another update for those networks making use of Undernet's ircu, as today version 2.10.11.04 is released.

The update mostly consists of bug fixes, but also has a few smaller new features. One of them being a new RAW to confirm if a user got his +x *.users.undernet.org host, being RAW 396. This is especially nice for those who have scripts running to not join any public channels before the user has gotten this host.

You can read the full changelog here.

problems at AMS-IX cuases lag

Wednesday, January 8 2003 by Asmo

Yesterday afternoon a sofware problem in a switch at the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX for short) cuased for problems on the whole of Internet. The failure was notable on IRC becuase lag was going up and down. The problem was solved after rebooting the switch, which unfortunally also made it impossible to investigate the source of the problem.

It is the second time in half a year the AMS-IX is experiencing problems. November the 7th the AMS-IX had problems becuase of a power failure which was cuased by a explosion in a transformer house which cut of electricity for 80% of this dutch capital city.

The AMS-IX is the biggest Internet exchange in the world, averaging a traffic of 10GBit/sec. It servers all Dutch ISP's and many from abroad (United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and the Nordic countries).

QuakeNet sets new record

Monday, January 6 2003 by Asmo

It could only have been QuakeNet to set a new userrecord. This evening they passed the 160,000 usermark, as their website's user ticker shows.

Will QuakeNet be the network who will reach the magical 200,000 border as first too? Guess we will know in a few months.

New design for EFNet.org

Monday, January 6 2003 by Asmo

And it was about time too actually. The old design of EFNet was rather dull and depressing. The admin of the box, uvex, announced the new design;

"We would like to announce the launch of a brand new web site in order to present the services and features more effectively. The new site has been designed to be easier to browse and provide more detailed information regarding EFnet IRC Network."

And in answer of IRCNews.com's question why the anime figure: uvex is simply a anime nerd

IRC plays role in continious RIAA hacks

Saturday, January 4 2003 by Asmo

The website of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is being hacked 6 times in as many months. For the last time last monday.

Last monday's hack allowed unauthorized people to post bogus news posts on the website. The URL where people could post news items was circulating over IRC, resulting in many bogus posts, and IRC users waiting for a reaction from the RIAA. They had to wait 7 hours before RIAA discovered and fixed this exploit.

Previous hacks resulted in for example making pirated music available on the website. The full article can be read on Wired.

New version of HydraIRC client for Windows has been released

Friday, January 3 2003 by Goodie

HydraIRC relased a new version (v0.336) with lots of changes, fixes, tweaks and improvements such as:

- edit server dialog box and context menus have been added to the connect dialog box.
- Server List docking window is now sorted correctly if you join a different server using the /server command
- Pressing Ctrl+Enter sends text as-is
- SENT CTCP replies are shown in the server window
- RECIVED ctcp replies are shown in current window in addition to the server window.
- HydraIRC can now select a user identity based on what network you're connecting to

You can read all there is about and download the IRC client from their website .

Thai prostitutes use IRC to sell themself

Friday, January 3 2003 by Asmo

The Nation, a english language news site for Thailand reports on how (mainly male) prostitutes have discovered IRC to advertise themself to customers.

"The students said prostitutes like to use the chat rooms because it's cheap, with a computer and Internet-access cost of Bt20-30 an hour all that's needed"

The goverment itself seems to be not so happy with the situation, but is unable to stop it, since the IRC servers are overseas, out of reach of the Thai jurisdiction.

The prostitutes themself come from middle to upperclass, unlike as you might have thought of first; "The students interviewed a 19-year-old male prostitute who said he came from a well-to-do provincial family to study in Bangkok, and entered the industry because he considered it fun and he had nothing to lose", explains the website.

TCP/IP celebrates 20th birthday

Friday, January 3 2003 by Asmo

The TCP/IP protocol celbrates it's 20th birtday. The introducttion on TCP/IP was on 1 januari 1983, and replaced the NCP protocol on the ARPANET network. About half a year later the first routers where also switched to the new protocol, which was the start of the Internet as we know today.

Weekly virus report

Friday, January 3 2003 by Asmo

A total of 6 new virusses found this week that are related to the use of IRC (well, more like mIRC). Apparently people still click, instead of think and then click. I hope that does not say anything about the average IQ of the users of IRC

The first virus, W32.HLLW.Zule, is a worm that will spread itself over the KaZaA filesharing network, as well as use IRC to spread itself. It comes as a executable, and tries to trick the user in running the program. When running it will try to delete any antivirus products it finds.

W32.Backzat.Worm is, as the name suggests, also a worm. It spreads over IRC only, and will try to delete any antivirus programs it finds on your computer. It will modify mIRC's script.ini, so it can use MIRC to distribute itself.

The third virus is a little more advanced. W32.HLLW.Sodabot is a backdoor that allows the cracker full access to the computer of the infectee. It has a IRC client build in, that will let the bot sit in a channel where the cracker can issue commands to update the bot, perform DDoS attacks, download and execute files and send the bot to other channels where it will attempt to infect other users on IRC. It will disguise itself as a innocent file, in the form of a game, or for example a movie. It will also use KaZaA and Morpheus to spread itself.

W97M.Ciga@mm uses a whole list of programs to spread itself. It will infect the Microsoft Word Normal.dot template, and then email itself using the Windows Adress Book. But it will also use KaZaA, mIRC, Pirch, BearShare, EDonkey, Morpheus, Grokster and ICQ to spread itself. One small nasty detail: if the computer is running Windows XP, the virus will delete all the files, and subdirectories of the WINDOWS system directory on June the 29th.

W32.HLLW.Backzat.B is another worm that uses email as its prime way of distribution, but if eDonkey2000, BearShare, Morpheus, KaZaA, AIM95, ICQ or mIRC is installed, it will use those too. It will attempt to delete antovirus products if those have not been updated yet to delete this virus.

The last virus (pfew), W32.Recory@mm is a mass mailingvirus written in Visual Basic, which means the Visual Basic runtime libraries must be installed in order for this virus to work. It uses the Windows Adress Book to mass mail itself, as well as a whole wealth of filesharing programs.

In case a virus was able to install itself on your computer, and despite the fact that you have a antivirus program installed, the virus might have deleted/disabled your antivirus program. This is a new trend we see more and more. The best way to get rid of such a virus is to use HouseCall, a free to use online virusscanner. After your computer is clean again, reinstall your antivirus program, and update it often (once a week is a real minimum).
If you are in the need of a good free antivirus program, then give AVG AntiVirus a try, It has both a paid, and a free version, where the free version lacks a few features. As always, remember your antivirus protection is only as good as your last update of the virus defenition files!

Klient 2.0.13 replacing 2.0.12 (beta)

Friday, January 3 2003 by cArLiLLoS

Unbelievable, isn't it? In less than a day, almost 3 releases. Well, this is a more stable release which has fixed some important bugs from the previous short-lived 2.0.12 (beta) like the client not parsing correctly the text received from the IRC server.

Smile Just go to the Klient website and get this new release of a good Irc client.

Klient 2.0.12 (beta) released

Thursday, January 2 2003 by cArLiLLoS

A second version of the Irc client Klient 2.0.12 (beta) is now available from its website. This has replaced a first post that contained major bugs that might get your computer logged off or shut down suddenly.

This new release has fixed many bugs including the raw 330 reply message ("is authed as") not being displayed right for Quakenet. Other fixes are channel CTCPs, variable parameters in script events, client version in the main caption, channel information dialogs, etc. On the other side, you can now set images in Klient's main display area, see users' sign-on time in the /whois info and the user information dialog and many other new cool features for this client's users to check and enjoy.

If you'd like to try a good alternative for the irc clients, give this good one a try. Download it from here.

Criten looses a long time sponsor and staff member

Thursday, January 2 2003 by Hardy

Due to personal reasons and the constant threath of DDoS attacks Snagged and its manager Mike Lafreniere left Criten to start up their own network called Saltek.net.

Network admins on Criten IrcJunkie has talked with was annoyed that Mike didnt even bother to give a proper notice before leaving and could remove his servers from the pool, which resulted in Saltek.net hitting 1300 concurrent connections the first day.

Criten.net has for a long time had a lack of servers so its clients could connect, so if anyone that has some bandwith and resources to spare they can fill in the Criten Link application.

Accourding to one of the network admins we have talked with Criten could easily have more then 15,000 concurrent clients all day they just had server coverage to handle it.

---
[MODIFIED: Mike informed us that the first estimate of 13 000 connections was wrong, and it was meant to be 1 300.]
_________________
Asmo

webmaster www.IRC-Junkie.org