NYT Discovers Internet's Wild Side: IRC 627
maztec writes "The New York Times (free soul-sucking registration required) published an article today entitled The Internet's Wilder Side. Apparently, according to the article, 'the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb , [but] a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat remains the Wild West.' In essence the article concerns itself with how IRC is the breeding ground of all the Internet's Evils, from animal pornography and illegal file sharing to virus making and computer cracking, it all starts here. I'd continue pointing out interesting quotes, but that'd be a waste. Go read it yourself. And if you're on IRC, remember, you're evil. Even if you're one of those do-gooders who uses Mozilla, LFS, or FreeNode servers for software development."
why is it always me that does this? (Score:4, Informative)
Quitcherbitchin'... here's the text. (Score:4, Informative)
Even as much of the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb, a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat remains the Wild West. While copyright holders and law enforcement agencies take aim at their adversaries on Web sites and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Napster, I.R.C. remains the place where people with something to hide go to do business.
Probably no more than 500,000 people are using I.R.C. worldwide at any time, and many of them are engaged in legitimate activities, network administrators say. Yet that pirated copy of Microsoft Office or Norton Utilities that turns up on a home-burned CD-ROM may well have originated on I.R.C. And the Internet viruses and "denial of service'' attacks that periodically make news generally get their start there, too. This week, the network's chat rooms were abuzz with what seemed like informed chatter about the Sasser worm, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers over the weekend.
"I.R.C. is where you are going to find your 'elite' level pirates,'' said John R. Wolfe, director for enforcement at the Business Software Alliance, a trade group that fights software piracy. "If they were only associating with each other and inbreeding, maybe we could coexist alongside them. But it doesn't work that way. What they're doing on I.R.C. has a way of permeating into mainstream piracy.''
Two weeks ago, the F.B.I., in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in 10 foreign countries, announced an operation called Fastlink, aimed at shutting down the activities of almost 100 people suspected of helping operate illegal software vaults on the Internet. The pirated copies of music, films, games and other software were generally distributed using a separate Internet file-transfer system, said a Justice Department spokesman, but the actual pirates generally used I.R.C. to communicate and coordinate with one another.
"The groups targeted as part of Fastlink are alleged to have used I.R.C. to have committed their crimes, like almost all other warez groups,'' the spokesman, Michael Kulstad, said in a telephone interview. Warez, pronounced like wares, is techie slang for illegally copied software.
When I.R.C. started in the 1980's, it was best known as a way for serious computer professionals worldwide to communicate in real time. It is still possible - though sometimes a bit difficult - to find mature technical discussions among the tens of thousands of I.R.C. chat rooms, known as channels, operating at any one time. There are also respectable I.R.C. systems and channels - some operated by universities or Internet service providers - for gamers seeking opponents or those who want to talk about sports or hobbies.
Still, I.R.C. perhaps most closely resembles the cantina scene in "Star Wars'': a louche hangout of digital smugglers, pirates, curiosity seekers and the people who love them (or hunt them). There seem to be I.R.C. channels dedicated to every sexual fetish, and I.R.C. users speculate that terrorists also use the networks to communicate in relative obscurity. Yet I.R.C. has its advocates, who point to its legitimate uses.
"I.R.C. is where all of the kids come on and go nuts,'' William A. Bierman, a college student in Hawaii who helps develop I.R.C. server software and who is known online as billy-jon, said in a telephone interview. "All of the attention I.R.C. has
Re:I.R.C.? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:why is it always me that does this? (Score:4, Informative)
Some names just don't have that ring to them... (Score:5, Informative)
One has to give the author credit for getting one thing right, though:
In some ways, the biggest problem is Microsoft Windows itself. Windows has holes that can allow a hacker to install almost anything on a computer that lacks a protective program or device called a firewall. Users' vulnerability can be compounded if they have not installed the latest patches from Microsoft.
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:3, Informative)
google link (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:3, Informative)
Those colour support hacks also work in Chatzilla, part of Mozilla.
Mainstream Press might be on to something? (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, its good to see it in the NYT. It was starting to get old seeing it on
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:5, Informative)
Then use an old buick as a shell. Carefully pack the entire contraption in a few tons of traditional explosives like plastique or nitroglycerin....
The really amusing part is that it isn't all that hard to build an atomic bomb. Only two ingredients are difficult to come by:
1. Enriched U-235 or Pu-239. The enrichment process requires a massive chemicals and refining infrastructure. Pu-239 is produced inside worked reactors and is carefully accounted for by UN watchdogs. Plus the Pu-239 has to be very pure. If it contains a large amount of Pu-238, it will be useless.
2. The initial charge has to be carefully shaped or else the bomb will fizzle. The only known ways to test a design are by actually blowing one up or running computer simulations. The former is rather noticeable, while the later is the reason we put an embargo on computing technology to certain countries.
If you want to know how to build a hydrogen bomb, go do a search for the Progressive article. Good luck on manufacturing a uranium neutron reflector!
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:5, Informative)
I think I just have proven that I am either old, or a geek. Probably both.
sin
Re:/list (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't tried doing one on openprojects or anything like that, though.
Re:Godwin's Law (Score:4, Informative)
Re:God forbid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How many years has IRC been running? (Score:4, Informative)
I do miss gopher though. I was on the internet for about 8 months before the WWW hit. Those were good days.
Remember nemesis.berkey.edu/~gdead to download all the
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:4, Informative)
Making it 16 years old.
http://daniel.haxx.se/irchistory.html
They don't (Score:5, Informative)
I use easynews and regularly READ (important note there) several of the "shady" groups. There's plenty of music and movies and stuff, but the kiddie fans and site crackers have ALL gone underground. LOTS of groups now flooded with PGP posts and encrypted RARs, locked away from everyone but the cliques that communicate elsewhere and use the groups as massive file stores. All that's left in the clear are stories about arrests and rumors of arrests - those folks are all running scared and getting busted even in places like Finland and Singapore. Even many of the bigger MP3 posters have left the building.
I do believe usenet is about to "grow up" the way the web did. Except newsgroups are useless to businesses for anything except support forums, so how this is going to affect things in the future remains to be seen.
Even most of the stuff in the DVD rip groups is intentionally mislabelled and you often hear about folks having their accounts cancelled due to their posts in the music and video groups. The only reason none of this affects me is because I don't post ripped movies or pop music (or illegal shit) - all my trading is done in the "international" and techno music groups where artists are more independant and copyright coverage a bit murkier.
That said, I think these folks must be late to the party. I'm sure there are plenty of newbs on IRC doing illegal shit, but nobody with more than half a brain would be doing it in the open on IRC where your IP can be grabbed in realtime. I'd say the NYT is, as usual, arriving VERY late to this party.
Re:sensationalist ? (Score:3, Informative)
There's some truth to that sentiment.
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good IRC clients for Unix/Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
And don't try EFnet, or DALnet, try Freenode and OFTC (irc.freenode.net, irc.oftc.net.) Good stuff.
Re:Good IRC clients for Unix/Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:God forbid (Score:5, Informative)
First off, since when is the www a "well policed little suburb?"
Actual quote from NYT:
Even as much of the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb, a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat remains the Wild West. While copyright holders and law enforcement agencies take aim at their adversaries on Web sites and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Napster, I.R.C. remains the place where people with something to hide go to do business.
Sounds like a reasonable statement to me. The cops ARE going after child porn web sites and p2p networks.
The author also made some funny contradictions. Like the part where he says there are only 50,000 people on all of IRC on at any given time. And then in the next paragraph and the rest of the article he goes on to say how there's no way to know how many people are online. Funny, but a NYT editor should have caught that.
Actual NYT quote:
Probably no more than 500,000 people are using I.R.C. worldwide at any time, and many of them are engaged in legitimate activities, network administrators say. [SNIP] It is almost impossible to determine exactly how many people use I.R.C.
Note the careful use of qualifiers probably vs. exactly.
The article was big on assumptions, and short on fact.
Actual NYT quote:
"I.R.C. is where all of the kids come on and go nuts,'' William A. Bierman, a college student in Hawaii who helps develop I.R.C. server software and who is known online as billy-jon, said in a telephone interview. "All of the attention I.R.C. has gotten over the years has been because it's a haven for criminals, which is a very one-sided view.
"The whole idea behind I.R.C. is freedom of speech. There is really no structure on the Internet for policing I.R.C., and there are intentionally no rules. Obviously you're not allowed to hack the Pentagon, but there are no rules like 'You can't say this' or 'You can't do that.'"
The article was full of well researched facts including interviews with the authors of the most popular IRC software.
I guess if the point of the article was fear mongering of the technically challenged, it got it's point across. But it seemed kind of yellow to me.
The article wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at the general public. It was fairly balanced and described the good, the bad, and the ugly of IRC. You've just got your panties in a twist because you think you're an l337 d00d.
Re:sensationalist ? (No Way!) (Score:5, Informative)
From the SANS [sans.org] Infosec reading room, Windows XP: Surviving the first day (PDF) [sans.org]. A little dated but good information for the not in the loop crowd.
Re:God forbid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Such a discovery! (Score:3, Informative)
There are two types of text formatting that are used on IRC. One uses ANSI escapes (nowadays these are rarely seen) and the other uses the mIRC style of color. Nearly every IRC client I've seen supports mIRC color codes, including BitchX, irssi, xircon, epic, ircii, and just about any other client made in the last 5 years or so.
The protocols have changed over time, and as such, several RFCs have been released as updates to the original RFC1459. In addition, many networks add their own nonstandard features and hacks to further improve their users experience. These new RFCs were released in 2000, IIRC.
Floods are rare and are rather difficult to do well nowadays. Most channels are protected with bots of some sort and most of these bots automatically prevent floods and nickfloods. In addition, these bots enforce bans, automatically kicking a banned user from the channel. While it's not directly part of the IRC protocol, bots and enhancements in client software have eliminated most of these problems. The same goes for a screen full of mode changes. I use irssi, which will condense mode changes into less lines so your screen isn't full of flooding.
Splitting any major network to get ops in a channel is virtually impossible now. For the most part, that issue was solved in 1996 when TS (on EFnet) and delay (on IRCNet) were implemented. At least on the EFnet side of things, this has been enhanced to TS3, TS5, and then a CHANFIX bot was added. Now on EFnet, even a channel which has been taken over can be fixed. Packeting servers to gain ops is useless and just doesn't happen anymore. So, unless you've been away from IRC for about the past eight years, you would know this isn't a problem.
As for the nat-unfriendly transfers, that's another myth. In mIRC, there's an option of how to obtain your IP. One method is "normal" and the other is "server." If you're behind a NAT, just select server. Instead of looking up your IP the normal way, it gets your IP from the server and as a result will get the IP of your gateway, thus allowing DCC to work correctly. You might have to forward a few ports if you want to DCC send, but that shouldn't be a huge issue. Nearly every other IRC client has a similar feature to get your IP from the server. I'm behind a NAT and have no trouble with DCC.
While all of your complaints were true at one time in the past, IRC has improved greatly in recent years. Just about every issue you mention has been addressed.
Re:They don't (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How to do it, dammit (Score:4, Informative)
Cesium-137 has a half life about 30 years; long enough to last, short enought for relatively small volumes to be quite hellishly radioactive-- about 80 curies per gram, if I recall.
In the end, you'll pretty much do nothing more than increase everyone's chance of getting cancer.
<sarcasm>What an effective terrorist weapon</sarcasm>
You've obviously never been personally involved in political debates on locating nuclear facilities; a large fraction of the population has hysterical phobias about radioactivity, even when there is no real danger. (I've seen a ditz go into hysterics on learning her skeleton was mildly radioactive from the natural potassium.)
Furthermore, while there will be few, if any, people getting an LD50/60 dose from a radiation dust bomb, cleaning up such an irradiated area could be prohibitively expensive. Failure to clean it up would result in an highly non-trivial increase in cancer rates in the area-- enough to make five-pack-a-day smoking look perfectly safe.
There's also the question as to whether or not Bin Laden would have competent enough people to know what they're stealing. For example, spreading a bunch of plutonium (Alpha Emitter) would be laughable.
Have you even taken a radiation health physics class? Alpha emitters are quite dangerous under the right conditions-- as you yourself noted, the real danger is in inhaling or ingesting radioisotopes. Furthermore, when you deal with a radiation source that's internal, alphas are about the worst of the lot, due to the high absorbtion of the radiation over short distnaces. As I noted, this is why you powderize the radioisope beforehand for this sort of weapon: to increase the chance of dust particles being inhaled.
The threat from a radiologic dust bomb isn't the initial short term exposure; it's the long term threat.
Re:God forbid (Score:1, Informative)
Thank you for playing.
Re:Lol (Score:3, Informative)