                     Hacking IRC - The Definitive Guide

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."

Contents

   * 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 i nsulted 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 convieniently 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 wil l need, it is important to point out that
if you are reading this document from your ppp/slip account you might
consider geeting a shell account if you are serious about hackin. 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 favor ite 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
reccommend these additional two tools: 1)Multi-Collide-Bot(MCB) and 2)LInk
Looker(LL). These two C programs are your infantry and intellige nce
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 nic k. 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 ch annel 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 anyti me 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 getti ng 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 presense of Bots as well as the presense 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 presensce on channel. Additionally Bots
provide a number of channel mainten ance 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 aga inst
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 spli t 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 w asting 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
(almsot always an op on the channel you are tr ying 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 r ight, 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 lik ely 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 chan ging 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 ment ion 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 thi ngs 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 su ccessfully 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 subse quently 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 r esult 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 getti ng 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.

Best Channels to Hack

#limbaugh
#rush
#lamerz
#newbies

email klider@panix.com
