Hacking IRC - The Definitive Guide

Published in

· 4 years ago

Copyright 1996 klider@panix.com Welcome to Hacking IRC- The Definitive Guide. The purpose of this page if you have not already guessed is to provide what I consider optimal methodology for hacking IRC channels. In addition, I provide some of the better channels to hack as well as fun things to do while "owning a channel."

Section 1-- Why Hack IRC?
Section 2--Requisite Tools
Section 3--What It Takes To Gain Control
Section 4--Link Looker(LL)
Section 5--Bots and Scripts
Section 6--Multi-Collide-Bot(MCB)
Section 7--Pre-Takeover Preparation
Section 8--Thing To Do ONce You "Own" the Channel
Section 9--Best Channels to Hack

[Image] See me if you dare.

Section 1-Why Hack IRC?

I have often asked myself this question and the answers are varied and numerous. One of the primary reasons for hacking IRC channels is due to shear boredom. However a multitude of secondary reasons exist. Foremost among these is the "that asshole op insulted me and/or kicked me and/or banned me from the channel and I WANT REVENGE! This is a perfectly valid excuse and boredom is not a necessary condition for implementing a takeover of an IRC channel. Nor is it a necessary condition that the reason yo u were insulted and/or kicked and/or banned was because in fact you are an asshole. All that is necessary is the will, the desire, a bit of skill, and of course the tools, which conveniently brings me to my next section.

Section 2-Requisite Tools

Any decent craftsmen needs a good set of tools and IRC hackers are no exception. Without the proper tools you are dead in the water. All of the tools I describe below are available on public ftp sites. Before I launch into a discussion of what you will need, it is important to point out that if you are reading this document from your ppp/slip account you might consider getting a shell account if you are serious about hacking. Hacking IRC from a slip/ppp is much more complicated than doing so from a sh ell account. There are those who will debate this but my experience has shown that mIRC or any of the other shareware IRC programs for the PC are no match for the speed and ease of use that an IRC shell script allows for. Thus the first tool required fo r hacking is an excellent irc shell script. If you have already used IRC via a shell account and are still reading this document you probably already have a script, which means you are well on your way! As far as IRC shell scripts go, my personal favorite is Lice - again available publically via ftpFTP. Other scripts exist but the richness and power of the LICE commands I believe is second to none. Now while it is possible to stop here and hack ops with just a script, you would effectively be putting yourself needlessly at a handicap. Therefore I recommend these additional two tools: 1)Multi-Collide-Bot(MCB) and 2)LInk Looker(LL). These two C programs are your infantry and intelligence respectively. Again both are available via FTP and both are C programs and therefore need to be compiled.

What It Takes To Gain Control

Without going into much detail clearly in order to effectively gain control of an IRC channel you must be the only op on your channel. If you are still clueless at this point, that is to say..You should be the only guy/gal with the @ in front of your nick. Once you have accomplished this, the channel is YOURS. Of course, that is until it is taken back or you decide to cease hacking the channel. There are a number of ways to effectively gain ops on a channel and I will start with the simplest, then mov e to the increasingly more complex and finesse laden methods. By far and away the easiet method of gaining ops on a channel is to ask. You laugh eh? Well don't. Clearly as hackers grow more prevelant on IRC the asking method becomes more and more unlikely to succeed. This is especially true of the bigger and well established channels that have cultures onto themselves such as #Netsex, #Teensex, #Windows95, #Bawel, #BDSM, #Blaklife, #Texas, #Hack, and any of the #Warez channels and a whole host of others. To gain ops in these channels you must become a channel re gular (i.e. one that hangs there freqently and becomes a known and trusted member of the channel). Since you have neither the time nor the desire to make friends on the channel you ultimately want to hack ops on, the asking method is the last thing you want to do on all but the smaller more ethereal channels, where you obviously stand a better although still slim chance of gaining ops through a request.. One important exception to the ask method is through the use of anonirc which can be used on any channel but has severe limitations..more on this later. But of course you didn't come this far to be taught how to ask for ops..so lets proceed with the next lesson. Aside from asking there are essentially two other ways of gaining ops. The first is through splits and the second is through anonirc. The following discussion mostly relates to splits but I will touch on anonirc briefly at the end. What is a split? A split occurs when the IRC server you are communicating on detaches from the rest of the net. If you are in a channel and by chance the only one on a particular server that splits away, you will not only find yourself alone on the channel, but will now ha ve the opportunity to gain ops. In order to do this you need to leave and rejoin the channel in which case you will now find yourself with the little @ in front of your nick. When your server rejoins you will have ops on the channel. Now you say, "Wow, thats easy enough". Wrong. More likely than not, especially on a bigger channel a number of things are likely to occur that will remove your op status. Remember now the goal here is to keep ops so you can "Have Your Way". Also and more importantly, if you go into a channel and wait around hoping the server you are on splits, you might grow old and die first. Therefore, what is a wannbe IRC hacker to do? Link Looker is your answer.

Link Looker

Link Looker is a lovely little program that acts as your intelligence officer. Without getting into the complexities or its mechanics, what it effectively does is to give your a message anytime a particular server detaches from the net and a message when it rejoins. Is the methodology becoming clearer now? Yes! Thats right! When LL tells you that a server is split ,you connect to that server and join the channel you seek to hack ops on and h ope nobody else split from the channel on that server(if this occurs you will not get ops).. If you find yourself alone, you will have ops and a fighting chance to gain control of the channel. It is important to realize that on many channels, just getting ops via a split and waiting for a rejoin is sufficient for gaining control of a channel. This is particularly true of small to medium sized channels as well as channels that are not organized or do not have Bots (more on this later), You simply wait for the server to rejoin and once the channel is full you execute your mass deop command (this is on your script and the key element in getting rid of any other ops) and you will be the only op left. The channel is yours and go do your thing! On bigger more organized channels, things won't be so easy due to the presence of Bots as well as the presence of scripts used by existing human ops.

Bots and Scripts

Bigger more organized channels inevitably have a Bot(Robot) or multiple Bots. Bots are essentially suped up scripts that attempt to maintain ops on a channel by their continuous presence on channel. Additionally Bots provide a number of channel maintenance tasks such as opping known members of the channel (either automatically or through password requests), providing notes, and other information. Bots however are primarlly used for keeping ops on channel and depending on the type of Bot, defending against IRC hackers. Bots come in many varieties and types but the best of them do a good job of deoping spliters(thats you silly..you are opped on a split and when you rejoin the bot will deop you). Not only will Bots deop you..many of the human ops have scripts (such as LIce) that depending on the settings employed will deop you as well. Now with the prevalance of powerful scripts on IRC a recent phenomona is the occurse of the desynch. This is a nasty event that takes place when you rejoin from a split and your script deops the existing ops and the existing ops deop you at the same time. What this does is confuse the shit out of the servers and cause them to desynchronize from one another. This is to be avoided at all costs. When this happens you w ill effectively become desynched from a large portion of the net and most the channel, (depending on what server you rode in on). What's worse is that you will think you have ops( which you will for that server) but in reality you won't and you will be wasting your time. So how with the prevalence of super Bots and Human ops with scripts do you take the channel? Using MCB of course!

Multi-Collide-Bot(MCB)

Multi-Collide-Bot (MCB) is a powerful tool and your best friend. MCB is an even lovelier program that creates a clone of a nick you want to kill (almost always an op on the channel you are trying to hack) on a server that has split(yes the one Link Looker informed you of). Basically you feed MCB the name or names of the nick you want to kill and tell it what split server to establish those clones and upon rejoin.BAM/SMACK/KIILL!! Yes thats right, the target is thrown out of the channel(losing ops) and must re-establish a connection with a server to get back onto IRC and into the channel. So yes, you have figured it out. If you kill all of the ops on a channel and you ride in on a split you will be the only op in the channel. Let me assure you there is nothing like seeing the nick kill messages of the ops you have targeted as you ride in on the split.

Pre-Takeover Preparation

There are a number of things you can do before you attempt to take over an IRC Channel to make things easier and be as well prepared as you can possibly be. 1)Pre-Attack Observation. Plain and simple you must know who you are attacking. One of the most important things you can do as you sit and observe the channel is to determine which bots and/or human ops are deopping on rejoins. These are the nicks you want to target first. You will fail if you don't kill these nicks and rejoin because you are likely to cause a desynch(discussed above). However, it is essential to make sure you kill all of the ops. Leaving just one op alive means you have lost that battle and must now regroup and wait for another split. It is important to watch out for ops changing their nicks if they detect a split. If they do this, the mcb you tagged with their nick will be useless to you. The way I prevent this is to be on both sides of the split. That is to be opped in the channel on the split server and have a clone in the channel on the other side of the split monitoring the goings on, telling you if ops change nicks or new people are opped (in which case you create a new mcb with their name on it).

Things To Do Once You "Own" the Channel

Once you own the channel, the decision is clearly yours on how you want to proceed and needless to say the number of things you can do is endless. However, let me share with you a number of time tested ideas that are sure to give you a thrill not to mention totally piss of the channel you have now hacked. The first thing you can do is to taunt the former ops of the channel. That is to say, they will probably be cursing you and telling you what a loser you are for hacking the channel. They will say things like "get a life, do something more productive". Remember don't take it personally. You have to keep in mind that it is the formers ops who in fact are the ones who need to get a life, considering the only power they have or make that had (if you successfully hacked the channel) was to have ops in the first place. So you can continue to taunt and if they get relay billegerent you can kick them off the channel. They will undoubtedly come back within a second or two and then you can say something li ke, "Now, now I am in control of the channel and I will not tolerate such language and behavior. If you are unable to control yourself I will be forced to ban you." Now this is sure to get some violent response from the former op in which case you subsequently kick and ban them and move onto the next person. Another thing I like to do is to word ban. This is particularly easy if you have LICE. What you do is pick a word that if typed onto the screen by any of the channel members, will automatically result in you kicking them off the channel with the reason that word is banned. This method is particularly good in channels like #teensex where people are always saying the word sex, male, female, teen, age, etc. All you do is ban those words and watch the kicks begin to fly. Another thing I like to do is moderate the channel. What this does with the /mode +m command is to make it such that nobody on channel can speak. This is a particularly good thing to do when many of the channel members are getting out of hand and you want to make some sort of statement without anybody interrupting you. Yes all eyes will be trained on you. If you want to be really mean, when you are finished hacking the channel, you can leave it moderated in which case nobody w ill be able to speak and the channel is effectively shut down. Other things to do which are nasty as well are to kick everybody out of the channel and make it invite only, effectively shutting it down as well. Think of your own creative things to do. I would love to hear about them..email me..if they are particularly interesting I will include them in this page with an attribution if you like.