Skip to main content

IRC through mIRC

 
Story time:
 
I had heard about IRChat in a podcast  (NSFW) at first. 
 
I had no idea until now it was a real thing that not only existed, but still exists. 
 
This is the kind of late 90's "Hackers"-esque mysticism that surrounds tech I love.
 
IRC is an application based protocol that uses a client/server model to chat over text. They're not necessarily forums, as the functionality is bare-bones 'type words'.
 
Also, little ASCII people like thisヾ(•Ï‰•`)o
 
 

I'm using mIRC, the most popular Windows IRC client.



It opens port 6667, which also can be used for unsavory things.
 
 
 Can't every port?


 Be mindful about the allowed connections - I have it set to open port 6667 on my private network only, and to disallow the connection when I'm not using it. Can't be too careful.

Ports can allow people to get access to your computer.

First you connect to a server, then you go into a channel. 

When you connect to the IRCnet server, you see this;

IP (special number to identify each device on a network) blocked, even though we probably have the same one. The wonders of NAT (network address translation) and having multiple households under 1 IP because we're still mostly using IPv4, right?

 

It kind of seems that many people are allowed to make their own servers on the IRCnet. By "Make servers", that probably means having an open port when needed. I wonder if we can consider this the first instance of true cloud computing? Someone else is managing the servers we use, right?


In retrospect, no, after all, we can make our own server using personal equipment. So someone is just using resources we allocate on our machine.

Here is one of the preset channels IRCnet has;

Someone has yet to show up again.


Look closely at the top of the menu bars;


One says irc.psychz.net:[port#]
The other says irc.us.irc.net:[port#]

Those are different servers,which I joined randomly:

I hope that's about the game.

After you join a server, you can make your own channel with /join #CHANNELNAME. You can join the #PETROCHSITH server on QuakeNet!...If I'm online. Otherwise, the channel disappears.

 

You can also set some precautions...Which, again, will not matter, as when I disconnect, the channel is gone.


Disclaimer: As of September 28th, 2020, If someone makes the channel called RUNTCPIP after this date, it is not under my management.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting IoT Devices to a Registration Server (Packet Tracer, Cisco)

In Packet Tracer, a demo software made by Cisco Systems. It certainly has changed a lot since 2016. It's almost an Olympic feat to even get started with it now, but it does look snazzy. This is for the new CCNA, that integrates, among other things, IoT and Automation, which I've worked on here before. Instructions here . I don't know if this is an aspect of "Let's make sure people are paying attention and not simply following blindly", or an oversight - The instructions indicate a Meraki Server, when a regular one is the working option here. I have to enable the IoT service on this server. Also, we assign the server an IPv4 address from a DHCP pool instead of giving it a static one. For something that handles our IoT business, perhaps that's safer; Getting a new IPv4 address every week or so is a minimal step against an intruder, but it is a step. There are no devices associated with this new server; In an earlier lab (not shown), I attached them to 'H
Post a Comment
Read more

Securing Terraform and You Part 1 -- rego, Tfsec, and Terrascan

9/20: The open source version of Terraform is now  OpenTofu     Sometimes, I write articles even when things don't work. It's about showing a learning process.  Using IaC means consistency, and one thing you don't want to do is have 5 open S3 buckets on AWS that anyone on the internet can reach.  That's where tools such as Terrascan and Tfsec come in, where we can make our own policies and rules to be checked against our code before we init.  As this was contract work, I can't show you the exact code used, but I can tell you that this blog post by Cesar Rodriguez of Cloud Security Musings was quite helpful, as well as this one by Chris Ayers . The issue is using Rego; I found a cool VS Code Extension; Terrascan Rego Editor , as well as several courses on Styra Academy; Policy Authoring and Policy Essentials . The big issue was figuring out how to tell Terrascan to follow a certain policy; I made it, put it in a directory, and ran the program while in that directory
Post a Comment
Read more

Create a Simple Network (Packet Tracer) + A Walkthrough

Again; I've done this, but now there's so many new things, I'm doing it again. The truly new portions were...everything on the right side of this diagram; The cloud needed a coax connector and a copper Ethernet connector. It's all easy to install, turn off the cloud (Weird), install the modules. Getting the Cable section of Connections was an unusual struggle - The other drop down menu had nothing within. It required going into the Ethernet options and setting the Provider Network to 'cable', which is the next step AFTER the drop-downs. The rest was typical DHCP and DNS setups, mainly on the Cisco server down there. The post is rather short - How about adding a video to it? Find out what A Record means - This site says 'Maps a name to an IP address', which is DNS. So it's another name for DNS? You can change them (presumably in a local context) to associate an IP address to another name.
Post a Comment
Read more