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It's not the first time in our history that we spotted happy couples both behind their own system, chatting away in our chat rooms. Today we had another prime example. And to celebrate their love we hereby congratulate Heretic121 and lozzles.
We've learned (through our team member Jobe) that UnrealIRCd.com announced that their downloads were compromised with a backdoor. Forcing the vbirc network to take immediate action to protect the servers and the users on it from abuse. A preventive meassure.
While our operators were scanning the 25+ servers to find out which ones were potentially running this unrealircd trojan build, Bryan from xzibition.com (a provider we use for a few of our leaf servers) has put together an automated script to help patch and update the irc servers.
Of course, since the core of the product is affected, a restart of the irc server is required, leading to netsplits on our network. To avoid unneeded downtime, and more convinience we decided to do them all in the span of an hour, and of course only the affected servers. The work has now been completed.
With the lack of a development team, and this embarashment from unrealircd.com (their site was compromised end 2009, and they did not spot this), we have decided to currently stick to 3.8.x branch and not upgrade to 3.9 or 4.0. and in the future potentially move to an alternative.
Anyway, we apologize for the unforseen and unannounced netsplits. But to avoid abusive users exploiting our server while we were fixing it, we decided to not disclose the maintenance until afterwards. Our internal review disclosed that none of our servers were exploited.
More information about this (if you're running UnrealIRCd yourself for example) can be found here, including "how to patch unrealircd 3.8.2.1 backdoor trojan": http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693961/vbirc_trojan_scan_unrealircd.txt
Floris
[edit] we've decided to go with aperson, thanks everybody for applying
April 2010, vbirc. The vbirc team is currently looking for a local irc operator to help out manage one of our local ircd servers hotel.vbirc.com - One could say: Someone to help run the hotel ;)
If you are familiar with the linux operating system, can work with vim, nano/pico text editors, ssh/sftp and crontab, and understand the basics of being an irc operator, then that is great. What's required besides understanding of how to manage an ircd is free time and common sense. Because we're looking for someone that can keep an eye on the hotel and its visitors. And go into the shell servers if it goes down to restart the ircd, and such things like those.
We're not looking for someone that doesn't have time on a daily basis and only wants the status though.
The hotel is open for the season, and that's until September 1st. After which you will be reset to regular user or official helper. However, if there have been No problems, and we've decided to go for a winter season, we might extend it with another 3 or 6 months. And then we might require your services again.
Your services by the way, are on a volunteer basis. And restrictions apply, ask Floris for details.
If you think you're up for it, capable to help run an ircd server hotel.vbirc.com this summer, and want to join our vbirc team on a temporary basis: Give us a call. Well, email us rather.
mrfloris at gmail dot com and start the subject with vbirc.oper.
From everybody that applies for this position we might lean towards someone that has a) registered nickname, b) owns a chat channel c) and has more than five users in it. If your channel is currently on another network you could move it to ours first.
Well, we hope to hear from you soon and I hope to reply to everybody before April 13th.
Floris & Team
Yes, we did it, it is back: StatServ. In the last handful of years we used to collect network statistics and publish them on one of our web sites. But due to lack of resources and money, and issues with the compile, we had to take down the service. Last year we only had a few details available - but a high request for more. So here we are: StatServ is back (oh yeah!).
Since early January 2010 we are gathering statistics about our network into a database, and publishing them on our web site. User and channel specific statistics are gathered for channels where the bot statserv is in. Registered users/channels will have more detailed statistics.
Any channel owner can request the bot, just poke someone in channel #help with a request.
More details about what the network statistics service is, can be found here: vbirc.com/stats.
And you can find the actual details it is publishing, here: stats.vbirc.com.
The vbirc network staff hopes you enjoy these tidbits of information, all gathered up on a page. Showing the top10 channels, users, and other fun facts.
Floris & Team
Welcome back everybody! We had a great 2009 building a chat network, and that's with your help. In 2010 we have even more plans to optimize your experience. Happy and Healthy 2010 to everybody.
From this blog post on our updated Terms of Services policies are in effect. We had minor changes, so nothing to worry about. Clarification regarding your privacy has been appended. And the policy regarding virtual hosts has been updated.
Basically if you come to the network to chat, and stay within the policies/rules of the network your privacy is very much so protected. We still auto +x upon connect to mask your host for 25 to 100% and you can still request a virtual host (and change it). What has not changed, but made more apparent is that if you come to the chat network to be an abusive user, or even try to break the law. That you should be aware breaking the ToS is considered mutual. A web site owner who's services you're abusing. Or third parties who help us fight the abuse might request the IP and we might disclose it. We might publicly set the g-line / k-line ban on the host, disclosing your IP.
And regarding the virtual host (vhost) you can no longer request one on a daily basis, but you can still change it on a monthly basis (accidental typing errors exempted). While this sounds more strict, we will slightly enforce it, giving users leeway. We have this in place for the top 3% users who constantly decide to change.
We have these changes made to make it a more friendly experience for those who join our network for fun times and want a good chat experience. This smooths it out a bit. While these policies were already here since the start of the network, they are now made more apparent.
Floris & Staff
