Another news page? Hey aren't there enough news pages already? Yeah there are, which is why this isnt one. Its just a little review of March's ircnet ircwar news. Looking back on the past month we decided there a few issues we'd like to comment on, so we used this page as chance to respond to what the other news services have been saying. Our comments arent that friendly, but we're quite fair, we bitch at everyone ;> Yeah we're not too kind to wrl, tbe, xorg, dC, AD, chatlords, etc, so you'll see we are not obviously from one crew.
Having said we're not trying to be a news page, of course if we hear of any news we will report it. And if any interesting news comes up in April we'll comment on that if we think the other news things are giving bullshit. So maybe it will be a kinda news page, who knows? Who even cares? Bookmark it if you want... its not a catchy url (cant be fucked to get one).
We mainly just commented on what other sources have said, so we'll give credit to them by noting how to get em.
The month began with ircops acting badly:
"An ircOps used an unauthorized test-server (or just plain raw-telnet?) to get illegal serverop in the channel #bjork. The trick was made by linking the server test.ircnet.dk containing an oped user to irc.ircnet.dk and squit it. There are ircops looking into this matter right now. [IrcNews]
We say ircops abusing powers is bad of course... but we wonder why they would go to such trouble just for serverop in #bjork, hardly a channel which is one of the most fought over it seems.
Around the beginning of the month was a load of stories about how Spacecrew got 0wned, or else they 0wned someone else, blah blah blah...
"Last night, #manchester was taken over by SpaceCrew. Could this be the "Revolution 909" they were talking about on their website (http://www.spacecrew.freeserve.co.uk)?" [ATS / Chockos' page]
"seems to me that the people reporting the stuff are spacecrew members, so who do i believe?" [kefz / tbe page]
We agree most of it seemed like bullshit. The stuff about spacecrew taken chans or having them taken went on and on, but nothing came in the news to suggest spacecrew were really any crew to care about, and the impression most people seemed to have was:
"Almost everything they report is false information. Ask anyone outside their crew and you will prolly get responses like: "oh the owned crew?" ;)" [- raz0r/hydrogen on tbe page]
Pretty much all through March war crews were either talking about or playing around with the anti-collide patch on .DE.
Chocko's page couldnt seem to make up its mind about the patch. On the 5th it said:
"That will totally be the end of all Collides, no collides can be made in this network" but by the end of the month they decided "the patch is not for closing 100% on collides, so collides will be history. You will still be able too collide users in .de."
We say, its definitely not the end of collides quite yet, but maybe if it gets on every server, or even just quite a lot, then collides will die out as a common technique. But we dont care really, collides have got boring. First flooding, then nuking, then collides, then proxy collides... all techniques have to die out and new ones be found.
Probably the biggest news of the month, Ace24 retires as leader of the wrls. He says: "I would just like to tell everyone that i am retiring, [IG-88] will bethe new leader of the warlords". kefz- said "tribe of course continues to stand with warlords.". We wonder if this is because tbe have been clinging onto wrl for so long they have forgotten how to do anything good for themself.
It doesnt seem to have been the end of the warlords. Although since Ace24 left they have lost a couple of channels and not taken any. But lets be fair, dont think this page is lame one-sided anti-wrl propaganda. wrl's traditional biggest enemies, dC, have done hardly anything this month either. They have lost many members, have few big channels, and seem to be in a down spell.
The crap with Spacecrew continues for another few days still, and chocko's page also reports of a lot of action for xorg around this time. There was fighting over #sesso first, also hacking of the Spacecrew botnet. Seems x-org did a lot this month. At the beginning of the month chocko reported them owning the cF botnet, in the middle the spacecrew one, and at the end the dC one.
"Takeover on #chatlords. The chan is known to be a neutral chan where almost everyone can get op. 'Doing a takeover on #chatlords doesn't show up any skills at all, just lameness', one upset regular op in #chatlords told IrcNews. Tribes newspage claims it was done by V0rlon with help from other Warlords, Tribes. 'Maybe they got tired of beeing banned from #chatlords', another #chatlords-op said."[IrcNews]
This takeover got a lot of attention, it was interesting to see the different reports. IrcNews seemed quite neutral, as normal the most balanced news, probably because it is run anonymously, no one knows for sure who it is, although there are rumours. tbe page was of course less neutral. It described #chatlords as "the channel famous for being anti-wrl/tbe and a place that attracts the newbies".
We think the idea they got tired of being banned could be true, #chatlords often ban anything they dont like. For example the ircnews bot is kicked out quite often, maybe (if you agree with kefz that the channel is full of newbies) they dont like the news service reminding them of what the real crews are getting up to while they play at being leet?
Chocko's page says "Taking channel like #chatlords doesnt shows your skills, atleast not when you use your deop tekneek". We say does it matter what technique you use if it works? If its such a lame technique, then if you dont have protection against it, what does that say about your skills?
#chatlords is given back.
Around these time, in the middle of the month, chocko reported quite a lot of action for Access Denied, mainly fighting with Toons. Hard to really tell who came out well or badly. Except the last thing we heard, on the 26th, Toons used the eggdrop1.1.5 bug .ban 9:10 to fuck their botnet. This makes AD sound a bit lame to us, since dC got 0wned by this bug more than a month ago, all crews should have known about it and should have written some protection for it. Even friendly home-chan bots prevent anyone from banning this way.
Chocko's page reports warlords losing #cyberchat and #sverige to the cc-opers. Since dC went downhill it seems cc-opers are one of the biggest crews out there, and certainly one of the few to challenge the wrls at the moment. But though they got their channels back they have been mostly +i and under heavy attack, so maybe cc-opers arent so strong after all.
Other news sources argue over how good they are. IrcNews says in an "exclusive interview" that they dont use smurfs and DoS attacks: "We are more interested in the weakness of ircd itself, not the tcp.". But chocko's page said this was because "they dont have the knowledge for smurfing or D.o.S attacking".
We wonder how smurfing or DoS take such knowledge!? They are mostly just downloading programs written by other people. Most people agree that nuking is more a kiddie-cracker technique and not real hacking or skilled warfare.
Btw, chocko's page said #cyberchat and #sverige were taken through *.jp. We're not sure if this is true, but anyway *.jp gives a lot of abuse, they dont seem to have any proxy checks, and they split too often, its easy to get proxy clone abuse from .jp. But has anyone ever seen an actual regular chatter from .jp ? Is it linked to ircnet purely for abuse or does it actually get used for real chatting!? Seems to us either it should be sorted out or delinked.
Chocko's page reports x-org hacking dC's botnet. We would tell you what the tbe page had been saying, but it hasnt been updated since the 15th. Not really what most people would call news.
Respect to x-org for 0wning dC's botnet? Hmm maybe, but then they were allies, and we dont think backstabbing deserves respect.
Interesting issue from Chocko's page: "People been saying 'hrnt & blank warlords lovers', if they dislike dC then it doesnt means they love Warlords. Warlords and X-OrG been enemies for ages". It's a good point, most ircwar this month hasnt been versus wrl/tbe. Before, it seemed to be wrl/tbe versus everyone else, but in March we've seen mostly fighting between other groups (x-org, hellnine, access denied, spacecrew, milleniuem, etc.) Only crew to really go for wrls was cc-opers, there the fighting still continues. Was this because dC have idled through March? Maybe if dC got back wrl would be fought more? Or maybe other crews decided to bitch at each other anyway, who knows.
The month ends with Chocko declaring "IRCNet is still an Warzone, and always will be". Probably true - even if irc techniques such as collides disappear, this month has seen a lot of botnet hacking, there is always that. Besides, IrcNews pointed out"It seems that more and more admins of 2.10.x irc-servers are turning off the check for opensock.".
We don't see anything short of full services wiping out ircwar. And we think perhaps the reason ircwar continues so much is because some ircops actually like it that way? We don't mean they like their network getting abused (though it's well known some ircops are involved with war crews). We mean they like ircnet still being a free net where you cannot "own" nicks or channels, which goes against the original spirit of irc (and we agree IRC should not be too heavily controlled.)
Just as I was to upload this I read on chocko's page that spacecrew 0wned #chatlords. Seems they are trying to prove wrong everyone who thought what we said under March 2nd (that they are not worth paying any notice to). Well as was said when V0rlon took #chatlords it doesnt take too much skills to take a place where you get @ easily. Then again it does show they have determination to be taken seriously. And you have to laugh at the self-declared "Lords" getting 0wned - again.