IRC and Security

[Paul Martin]

I am sure that the following post will bring out religious fervor by
a few fanatics, however I am prepared to don my asbestos suit.  

Disclaimer: I am not the net police, just a system manager who has been
            burned.

I am a Unix system administrator here at the University of Cincinnati.
I have just recently discovered a band of computer hackers/pirates that
have been using the Internet to pirate commercial software.  There were
more than twenty individuals involved.  In talking to many of those involved,
there seems to be a common thread, IRC or Inter Relay Chat.  These people 
told me that they were passing the passwords through IRC as well as meeting
other hackers.  I believe that IRC has potential to do some good, however
I believe that it attracts those with little to do with their time and those
immature people who use IRC as a big teenage party line.  We have removed
IRC because of the problems that I described above.  I urge all administrators
who are interested in preventing unauthorized use of their system and who
have IRC installed, to re-evauluate their desision to keep IRC.  To illustrate
the point of IRC being used by those with nothing better to do with their
time I have enclosed a copy of a message posted to alt.irc which describes
a plan to use the internet for fantasy role playing games:


Xref: ucunx1.san.uc.edu alt.irc:126 rec.games.frp:1361 rec.games.mud:576
Path: ucunx1.san.uc.edu!ucunix.san.uc.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!kimf
From: kimf at nntp-server.caltech.edu (K. Dorian Flowers)
Newsgroups: alt.irc,rec.games.frp,rec.games.mud
Subject: IRC role-playing games network
Message-ID: <1991Mar9.023832.28600 at nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 91 02:38:32 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 66


Introducing ........

                           ******   IFN   *****

    Internet relay chat (irc) Fantasy role-playing (frp)game Network! 

(Yes, the ultimate acronym nightmare has finally arrived.)	

>From some obscure desire to combine our love of role-playing games and
our wish to be in charge of something, Jason Gabler
(jygabler at ucdavis.edu) and I are attempting to create an network of IRC
servers devoted more-or-less to role-playing games.

On this network, you will be able to play role-playing games of any
genre consistent with the format of Internet Relay Chat, give and
receive hints or suggestions on playing in or running a campaign, trade
stories, etc.  We're hoping to get busy enough so that we'll have
people on all the time, so that anyone hankering to drop out of reality
for a while can find some willing partners.

To get more people using our network at any given time, we are trying
to accomplish two things: 1) get more servers connected to our network,
and 2) convince a few suck...er, I mean game masters to run campaigns
with regularly-scheduled sessions on our network.

By attaching more servers to our network, we make our network available
to a greater number of net.people who, having nothing better to do with
their time, will inevitably find their way to our network and start
playing role-playing games. We only have a few servers up right now,
two of which are in California so ANY extension to our network is going
to be a BIG improvement.

If you have the urge to become one of those big-headed IRC server
operators, your machine runs Unix and you have the resources, then
contact Jason Gabler (jygabler at ucdavis.edu) to see where to get the IRC
server source, how to get it running and then which machines you should
have it connect to in order to become part of our little network.

Jason Gabler has taken it upon itself to maintain the network and to
deal with all matters having to do with Internet Relay Chat, so if you
have questions involving IRC, such as how to get your hands on the IRC
client and make it run, how you use the IRC client, what's the nearest
server in our network that you can access using your client, etc., bug
him. :)

I get the fun part: coordinating all the role-playing games that we
want to have running on our network. I am hereby putting out a call to
all potential game masters who have nothing better to do to come run a
campaign on our network! Just send mail to me, at
kimf at tybalt.caltech.edu, telling me who you are, how people can reach
you, a confirmation that you have at least one complete adventure ready
to run and a description of it, and what times you can play. I'll work
all the responses that I get into a list and post it for you.


SO!!! If you're interested in becoming a server operator, a game
master, or you just are a potential player who wants to receive updates
on the status of our network, contact us!

jygabler at ucdavis.edu  (Jason Gabler, Network Coordinator & UCDavis IFN Operator)
kimf at tybalt.caltech.edu (Kim Flowers, Gaming Coordinator & Caltech IFN Operator)


We can send you additional information, help you set up a campaign,
etc. Don't miss out...contact us now!


-- 
+-----------------[Paul Martin @ Engineering College OCC, UC]-----------------+
| Internet: pmartin at uceng.uc.edu        | "Yes I am serious,                  |
| Dumb:     ...uceng!pmartin            |  and don't call me Shirley"         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+