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Why Are Canadian Sympatico Users Being Banned On EFNet? 107

Posted by Cliff from the one-bad-apple-spoils-the-bunch dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "After being away from IRC for over a year, changing ISPs and moving my physical self to another apartment, tonight I tried to get back on EFnet. With a brand new IP, and a brand new computer, I discovered that all over EFnet, all channels related to Linux are banning all Canadian Sympatico users, this includes high speed customers, dial up users, and business users. In fact, the ban is quite severe and bans the entire sympatico.ca domain. I've tried to message several operators in #linux, #linuxhelp, and #slackware, but nobody is responding. What's going on?"
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Why Are Canadian Sympatico Users Being Banned On EFNet? More

Why Are Canadian Sympatico Users Being Banned On EFNet?

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  • Odds are (Score:3, Insightful)

    by leviramsey ( 248057 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @03:03AM (#4562344) Journal

    Somebody on Sympatico was being such an ass when a ChanOp had a bad day, managed to get a different IP, so anything from Sympatico was blocked.

    Hmmm... banning subnets... where have we heard that before?

    • More importantly, lots of channels ban all users who don't have a working identd. I remember a fresh new system I installed and I went to get on IRC and was aggravated that the channel I was going to join had banned me for some reason.. hehe, nope, just didn't turn on identd yet. :)

      It is highly likely the person who posted this story didn't have identd up.
  • The Canadian government has been working on a bill to make open source software illegal....only commercially sold and supported software will be legal as of June 1st 2003.

    This all stems from the fact that the Canadian government has been in negotiations to sell British Columbia to Microsoft since 1999.

  • same thing from online.no (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bob@dB.org ( 89920 ) <bob@db.org> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @03:54AM (#4562508) Homepage
    or at least it used to be. that covers quite a few hundred thousand norwegian uses as well (adsl, isdn and modem). i also tried messaging ops to find out what was going on, and never got a response. in the end i just figured; fuck it! do i really want to be on a channel with people willing to gag half a nation (online/telenor is the biggest norwegian isp) just to shut up a few noicemakers? my advice is to find yourself a channel with less braindead operators. shouldn't be hard :-)

    • Re:same thing from online.no (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arcade ( 16638 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:33AM (#4562614) Homepage
      As a norwegian, and as chanop on efnet#norge, I know quite well how much noise a few idiot-users can generate. Wide bans are not that unusual.

      *.no is getting banned from more and more channels on EFNet. That is not very strange, when you consider that online.no doesn't take IRC-abuse complaints very seriously. The same goes for many other norwegian ISP's.

      As long as norwegian kiddiots act as they do, and the same goes for the canadian kiddiots, one cannot expect channel operators to take heed of one or two good seeds among the thousands of bad ones.

      If you are that desperate to join a certain channel, buy yourself a server somewhere, or get a shell-account from a friend - so that you can bounce of that and onto the IRC-network of your choice. One moment though - make sure that friend of yours is a _Friend_ and not someone that allows everybody to get accounts on his box - or that IP is sure to be banned from several channels as soon as the first kiddie appears.

      Oh, and "shut up a few noisemakers" .. are you aware of what amount of noise a "few noisemakers" can generate? And are you aware that EFNet just supports 25bans per channel? And that a single floodnet often is far more than 25 flood-klients?

      Now, how would you solve that problem? Please, do explain, in detail.
      • As long as norwegian kiddiots act as they do, and the same goes for the canadian kiddiots, one cannot expect channel operators to take heed of one or two good seeds among the thousands of bad ones.
        It would seem that your definition of idiot is even broader then mine. Based on the above paragraph it seems you place about 99.9% of Internet users in this category. And you're a ChanOp on #norge? (for our international readers: norge is Norwegian for Norway).
        If you are that desperate to join a certain channel, buy yourself a server somewhere, or get a shell-account from a friend - so that you can bounce of that and onto the IRC-network of your choice. One moment though - make sure that friend of yours is a _Friend_ and not someone that allows everybody to get accounts on his box - or that IP is sure to be banned from several channels as soon as the first kiddie appears.
        This is elitist crap. Not everyone has the possibility to get an account on another computer, not everyone has the opportunity to pick and choose their ISP. Me, i work in the industry, and would have no problems finding a host that would allow me access, but you're missing the point...
        Oh, and "shut up a few noisemakers" .. are you aware of what amount of noise a "few noisemakers" can generate? And are you aware that EFNet just supports 25bans per channel? And that a single floodnet often is far more than 25 flood-klients?
        I think a have a fairly good idea about how much noise a "few" noisemakers can generate, yes! My point is that this is (to me) a completely unacceptable approach for controlling noise. On my list of really bad ideas, it's right up there with reducing SPAM by blocking all mail from Korea and China.
        Now, how would you solve that problem? Please, do explain, in detail.
        I really don't care enough about this to apply by brain to that problem. All I was saying was that I'd rather not hang out on a channel where thinks that blocking ~70% of all Norwegians is an acceptable solution to the noise control problem.
        • It would seem that your definition of idiot is even broader then mine. Based on the above paragraph it seems you place about 99.9% of Internet users in this category. And you're a ChanOp on #norge? (for our international readers: norge is Norwegian for Norway).

          I did indeed generalize, and I did indeed make the problem larger than it is. But the main point stands. If you're running, say, #usa or whatever - and three out of four norwegians that join the channel acts like idiots. What is the natural thing to do? Ban the damn country - of course.

          The same goes if 3 out of 4 users from one ISP acts like idiots.

          Norway unfortunately have far too many 13-year-olds online on IRC, which does reflect negatively on us. Our country get banned from far too many channels. I fully understand and support those that ban us however.

          Not everyone has the possibility to get an account on another computer, not everyone has the opportunity to pick and choose their ISP. Me, i work in the industry, and would have no problems finding a host that would allow me access, but you're missing the point...

          IRC is a priviledge, not a right. If you're having problems getting onto IRC, its YOUR problem, nobody elses. Maybe its elitist, in my eyes - you don't have a _right_ to join any channel, any network, nor a _right_ to join any channel. Its a priviledge, and it may be revoked for whatever reason those that run the channel finds appropriate. Wheter YOU find it appropriate is quite irrelevant.

          I think a have a fairly good idea about how much noise a "few" noisemakers can generate, yes! My point is that this is (to me) a completely unacceptable approach for controlling noise. On my list of really bad ideas, it's right up there with reducing SPAM by blocking all mail from Korea and China.

          If I don't want to receive email from those countries, then I block them. Which I've done on several on my accounts. I wouldn't implement it on a mailserver-wide though.

          Why would _I_ want to receive any mail from Korea or China? If people I know there want to send me email, they may ask me to give them a shellaccount on one of my machines, which they can send their mail from.

          I really don't care enough about this to apply by brain to that problem. All I was saying was that I'd rather not hang out on a channel where thinks that blocking ~70% of all Norwegians is an acceptable solution to the noise control problem.

          Don't do that then. I'm sure you won't be missed. You're getting irritated because you're blocked, but nobody else really cares about it. :-) too bad.
          • IRC is a priviledge, not a right. If you're having problems getting onto IRC, its YOUR problem, nobody elses. Maybe its elitist, in my eyes - you don't have a _right_ to join any channel, any network, nor a _right_ to join any channel. Its a priviledge, and it may be revoked for whatever reason those that run the channel finds appropriate. Wheter YOU find it appropriate is quite irrelevant.
            You are of course correct, but once again you completely missed my point. I don't mind if channel operators ban online.no or sympatico.ca. I don't mind if they ban all Norwegians or all Canadians. Hell, for all I care they can start banning black people and muslims. But in my view, this demonstrates a degree of narrowmindedness (and in the later examples even racism) that I don't accept. So it doesn't bother be that I'm banned on these channels. I'm quite sure I wouldn't enjoy the company in any forum where such criterion are used for excluding people. And this was what I was trying to get across in my original post. Never mind that you're not allowed into #linux, you can find much better company elsewhere...
            • Nevermind him. You're right and everyone knows it except for the elitist channel ops.
              Here's the silver lining though, these assholes are doing a very good job of segragating themselves from the rest of us...let them, good riddance to ignorance.
              • I couldn't agree more, and in fact I've never installed an IRC client on any of my own machines for exactly that reason.

                There's an additional benefit, though. Now that the elitist assholes and the complete idiots are segregating themselves onto "cooler" channels (IRC and IM, respectively), usenet is actually becoming useful again.

            • Or at least not a major one... I was (still technically am) an Op on #anime on the UnderNet, and not only did we have norway banned ocassionally, but we also eventually had numerous other european countries, south american countries, and mexico at one time or another.
              Was this elitism? Hell no, one of our most beloved operators was based out of Norway and another spent half the year in Mexico... This was done simply because the channel would've been unusable to the vast majority of visitors do to the hourly (not exagerating) visits by flood bots. What other option did we have? We tried selectively banning subnets and ISPs, but it didn't work!
              On Undernet one can be invited through a channel ban, so individuals who wanted to access the channel still had some options...
              You still haven't answered as to what your solution would be. Instead you just whine and call the operators names and say you're better off not associating with them. Mayhaps they're better off not associating with you with an attitude like that? You remind me of the guy who cried to us in the help channel that he was banned from #Ottowa, and that obviously must be illegal since he lived in #Ottowa, so he wanted a Network Op to go remove the ban... :)
              I'll give you the same explanation we gave users who would send us a /msg about being banned... We're sorry, but the volume of abusive users was simply too great from your area/isp/domain/country and we had to block everyone. Encourage your ISP to be tougher on abusive users, or take your business elsewhere... Eventually we'll reconsider the ban and give everyone a second chance.
              • i'm quite fed up with this thread. for some reason you refuse to understand that i don't give a fuck about your bans. all i was trying to do was point out a silver lining for the person posing the original question.

                that beeing said, your signature (below) sums up my feelings about these wide bans quite nicely.

                -- -Merrow "For every action, there is an unequal and opposite overreaction."
                • You don't act like you don't give a fuck, you spend alot of time going on about them being bad and pointless and even try to use my sig to prove your point... And yet you still avoid the question of "What other solution is there?"... I fail to see a silver lining in what you've said... Saying "my advice is to find yourself a channel with less braindead operators." doesn't help the fact that the user is unable to get the help they need because their ISP is banned... btw, my sig is more in reference to lusers responding to my calm explanation of why their ISP is banned by DoS'ing me than placing a ban to defend an IRC channel from a large amount of abusive users...
                  • This "solution" (banning a whole ISP/country) surely seems like cutting one's nose off to spite one's face. You don't see Best Buy closing its doors because one in every hundred people walking in off the street are there to shoplift. I know that's not a perfect analogy, but c'mon, we're bombing a country to stop a few (defined as over EFnet's apparently limit of 25 and fewer than what you'd need to make that ratio 3 of every 4 visiting Norwegian being abusive work for you) noisemakers.

                    I was stunned when I read the real technical reason why abusers can't just be banned -- twenty five bans per channel is all you get? Something needs to change on the technical side, then, not on the "whiny lamers who complain that they can't get onto channel #xyz because a few people from their domain/country pissed us off once" side.

                    I completely recognize the challenges faced by the average IRC channel. IRC is, by design, a public interface, so keeping out someone who's determined to get in is difficult. I understand that banning thousands or tens of thousands of users/IPs/whatevers can be cumbersome for the humans involved and painful for the machines who have to parse the lists whenever someone wants in, but please, 25 bans and you're done?

                    Why can't the EFnet IRC daemons automatically ban just the IP address where massive floods come from (massive meaning more than a few hundred lines -- you shouldn't be punished for accidentally pasting the output from "select * from user;" apart from the brutal tongue lashings from your fellowes :)? Or even a subnet? More importantly, even if nothing else could be changed about EFnet's software, why oh why can't people be "whitelisted" back in?

                    This kind of thing probably wouldn't annoy people so much if they'd at least get a response from a channel operator or an explanation from the server itself. To simply ignore someone from a specific domain, specifically inquiring (in a polite fashion) about gaining access to your channel, is rude and infuriating. I know, for every ten "polite inquiries" you receive, nine of them are probably from l33t skript kiddi3z trying to smooch their way back in to make your life hell, but such is the way of the IRC channel operator's life.

                    I've dealt with my share of nuisances, but then again I've never run into a cap on the number of bans I can apply either (admittedly, I don't use EFnet, so it could just be a difference in IRC daemon software or something). It's a bitch, but that's what I get for donning the cap of a channel op.

                    I don't mean to insult or offend, here; I'm just seriously trying to offer insight into why people get so damned angry about stuff like this. I probably wouldn't get too irritated if I were suddenly banned as the result of a mass-ban. I'd probably try to get in contact with somebody who might be able/willing to help, engage them in conversation if they're willing to talk, and go away if they're not. I know it's hard for both sides -- hell, I bet the abusive ones are annoyed too (*grin*) -- but the whole IRC thing would probably work a bit more smoothly if people weren't always so eager to switch into Complete and Utter Bastard(tm) mode.

                    • You don't see Best Buy closing its doors because one in every hundred people walking in off the street are there to shoplift.

                      If one in every hundred people (that's quite many, really) walking into a given store started knocking down shelves, throwing water balloons, spraypainting everything red, and generally making it impossible for everyone else to shop, you bet they'd close down that store.

                      That is, assuming they for some reason couldn't set up better security or do something else to stop such insane behavior. Apperently, in the analogous case on EFNet, they can't. It's 25 bans or nothing.

                      With the rest of your post I agree. The real problem is indeed a technical one. 25 bans is not enough to allow fine-grained access control, particularly if they can't be overridden. Given this, the ops are stuck between letting the troublemakers in or banning whole countries. And innocent users suffer the consequences.

                      Now, unless we actually find someone here who can do something about these technical issues, why don't we just conclude that the whole thing sucks, and leave it at that?

          • On my list of really bad ideas, it's right up there with reducing SPAM by blocking all mail from Korea and China.

            If I don't want to receive email from those countries, then I block them. Which I've done on several on my accounts. I wouldn't implement it on a mailserver-wide though. Why would _I_ want to receive any mail from Korea or China? If people I know there want to send me email, they may ask me to give them a shellaccount on one of my machines, which they can send their mail from.



            um.. I agree about blocking, but if you've blocked their email's they can't exactly email you and ask for a shell account now can they? :)
            As a question how would you recomend someone contacting you. I don't usualy give out my phone or address, likewise I sure don't give out my fax. Any ideas?

        • Re:same thing from online.no (Score:4, Insightful)

          by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @09:07AM (#4563405)
          It would seem that your definition of idiot is even broader then mine. Based on the above paragraph it seems you place about 99.9% of Internet users in this category.

          Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

      • "If you are that desperate to join a certain channel, buy yourself a server somewhere, or get a shell-account from a friend - so that you can bounce of that and onto the IRC-network of your choice."

        What? ....

        I thought the whole point of getting access from an ISP was that you had access to the resources on the WWW. Now, I can understand the politics behind not wanting to have to continually ban a few, but suggesting someone out there might go find resources elsewhere just to use something most others could use without problem?

        It's a double edged sword, I tell ya.....
        • www != irc.
          internet = irc + www + ftp + ssh + telnet + etc...

          p.s. the reason nothing is capitalized here is that slashdot does not like postings that contain a large number of capitalized letters. quote:
          Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
          Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like yelling.
      • As far as getting access elsewhere, are there any isp's out there that will sell you a tunneled static IP? For a reasonable price? That way, if you have limited choices in broadband, you could get around this type of issue, along with issues of your broadband provider blocking inbound ports. Then, it's just a matter of getting the tunnel set up over something like https, so that the tunnel can't be detected.
      • Get yourself an eggdrop bot or other bot with ban management that will allow you to have as many bans as you like and put that in your channel. Since you assume that the average person can get access to a bnc or shell account I'm sure you yourself could run an eggdrop. I thought eggdrops were required on EFnet, what with no services.

  • Solicits a question... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 3-State Bit ( 225583 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:25AM (#4562595)
    This brings up an interesting question, which is whether I can help out a friend by routing her IRC traffic or his for her/him, if I have a large server up a lot. I'm not sure I would do it open-to-the-public, but as something for a friend, why not?

    2) Anyone who gets posted to slashdot and hangs out on IRC probably has enough techie friends that one of them would be willing to host such a service.

    So, a better ask-slashdot might be:
    How do I route around draconian ban-by-subnet IRC policies?

    Philosophers ask WHY. Engineers ask HOW.

  • Canada is infamous for its script-kiddies. (Score:4, Informative)

    by arcade ( 16638 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:29AM (#4562605) Homepage
    Canada is infamous for its scriptkiddies. As long as its impossible to positively ID a particular person due to IP-jumping, ident-changing and so forth, the only solution is to set an ISP-wide or country-wide ban.

    Blame it on the kiddies. If it gets too noisy due to a single country/ISP, then the only logical solution is to ban that country/ISP.

    In addition, EFNet#linux and other EFNet channels are infamous for beeing non-friendly and not very helpfull. You would do much better using Openprojectsnet or whatever its named right now. Much more friendly.

    • Re:Canada is infamous for its script-kiddies. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, the solution is to get a user id system of your own in place or to improve the system's capability to deal with anonymous assholes. Mass blocking complete ISPs is giving up, not a solution.
      • Getting a "user-id" system doesn't work. It won't be implemented on the serverlevel (praise the $DEITY), and will have to be implemented by bots.

        Now, most EFNet servers ban bots. Some allow them, as long as they're not rogue. Now, what kind of problems can one expect if one uses such a bot? Well, we're using one on EFNet#norge, or used to use one. We called it "Norvoice" - and made #norge moderated.

        To get voice, you had to apply for voice, with an email. We would 'accept' the application, an email was sent out with a password, which you had to reply to / give the password to norvoice for the account to be activated.

        Each account had certain hostmasks associated with it.

        Now the problem started. People wanted hostmasks to be added. People claimed to be other people. People forgot their passwords. People changed email addresses. People wanted voice immediately and started harassing the ops for it. (With 400-600 people on a channel, guess what kind of NOISE that generated). People didn't understand the system. People didn't want to give out their email address. People didn't want to be "registered".

        And, "improve the systems capability to deal with anonymous assholes" isn't possible when you're not the one running the damn network. chanops have to use the features that are available to them. If features isn't available, then tough luck. Then one uses the features that works - namely banning ISP's. Its a solution. And, even better, its a solution that WORKS.

    • Re:Canada is infamous for its script-kiddies. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WEFUNK ( 471506 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @10:11AM (#4563790) Homepage
      How long has this reputation existed? I'd be interested to know if it's related to the high penetration of broadband in Canada (primarily Sympatico DSL and Rogers cable). If so, it's more than just disappointing that entire countries are being penalized for adopting high speed access and we should expect to see more of this (both script kiddie problems and overzealous blocking) as broadband is more widely adopted.

      I suppose problems like this contribute to the growing list of ISP policies and practice against power users, static IP addresses, domain hosting, bandwidth limits, etc. To protect networks from being abused and banned, might we expect to see even stricter ISP controls (and decreased privacy) in the future, such as expanding the current lack of support for Linux to actually banning the use of Linux and other unsupported systems?
      • How long has this reputation existed? I'd be interested to know if it's related to the high penetration of broadband in Canada (primarily Sympatico DSL and Rogers cable). If so, it's more than just disappointing that entire countries are being penalized for adopting high speed access and we should expect to see more of this (both script kiddie problems and overzealous blocking) as broadband is more widely adopted.

        I've never heard of this reputation -- but sympatico.ca was one of the first domains that I've ever summarily banned from any network.

        I've detected repeated hack attempts and port scans coming from sympatico.ca. After sending abuse reports via email to sympatico and receiving no response, I just decided that I'd be beter off not allowing any traffic from sympatico.

        Is it fair? no...but what's the alternative?

        --Turkey
      • - I'd be interested to know if it's related to the high penetration of broadband in Canada (primarily Sympatico DSL and Rogers cable).

        I think that the rise in 24 hour connected broadband access by the masses has given rise to 24 hour connected relays that script kiddies from other countries may utilize.

        Judging by the large number of formmail.pl attempts that my servers get, QWest (aka USWest) gets my vote for most (infectiously) deployed proxy servers out there. .cn domains (of course they might not be remote controlled) come next, then South America, and finally Canada.

        I have noticed that the spammers are trying harder to stay under the radar more lately. A few months ago, the hosts they infected with their relay software would spam thousands of targets a day. Now they seem to distriute the load a bit more, returning after a few days to a week to try to not look so obviously infected.

  • IRC Politics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Komarosu ( 538875 ) <nik_doof@ni3.14159kdoof.net minus pi> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @08:05AM (#4563210) Homepage

    Channel politics are flakey at the best of time, all it takes is some idiot in a country to say summat wrong to a chanop and there banned. Another widespred ban on few networks is *.aol.com, as people on technical channels dont belive that "technology wise" people could possibly use AOL. It's these generalisations that end up with domain bans due to a few users spoiling it for the rest.

    As for banning ISPs, all it takes is a few "scriptkiddies" to come onto a technical channel with there MP3 scripts and l33tsp34k to annoy a few ChanOps and boom...perma-ban

    For further note, i am a Chanop on various channels on the HashNet network, and yes people do get domain banned for stupid reasons. Maybe this will just give you more of a insight.

    • The real problem is perhaps that original poster seems to think that he has a "right" to be on a certain irc channel/server. He does not. Running a channel/server/channel website/ftp/fserve is a hassel. For every nice user you seem to meet a thousand assholes.

      Some domains seem to contain more assholes then others. AOL users are clueless, braindead and stupid. No not really, but the ones who keep asking stupid questions in caps in bad english and don't listen to answers are. The silent ones you never notice.

      For some reason a lot of the newbies seem to presume that noone in the channel has anything better to do then hold their hands. What they seem to forget is that they are not alone.

      A well operated channel has rules to make life bearable. No color, no requests, no away messages whatever. If people then pull tricks to evade these rules there is really only 1 workable solutation. Domain wide ban.

      The solution perhaps would be to create somekind of authenticated irc version. I believe MS is working on something like that. Personally I rather live with banning a few domains.

      Is there any other way to operate a channel? So far the discussion doesn't seem to have listed one.

  • The biggest offenders: .ro, .ca, .no and .mx (Score:4, Informative)

    by pvera ( 250260 ) <pedro.vera@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @08:26AM (#4563260) Homepage Journal
    Don't just blame draconian ops, it is more of an act of desperation. In undernet we take so much crap from kiddies that 99% of the time happen to be coming from .ro, simpatico.ca (its so bad we call them simpaticrap, go figure), .no and .mx . I have personally banned .mx and .ro temporarily a few times from #asp on undernet because once a kiddie puts his/her mind into making you miserable it will take minutes to max out the ban list. Only reason we cannot ban .no and .ca is that too many innocent people will get hit.

  • Same on DALnet (Score:3, Informative)

    by iamplasma ( 189832 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @08:29AM (#4563267) Homepage
    I'm not a sympatico user, I'm a DALnet user and channel operator instead. While I've never set such a broad ban myself, I know of many channels which have banned sympatico. Apparrently there was an extremely major spammer on sympatico, who kept jumping IPs, simply to the point that operators were forced to ban the entire domain.

    So there is a reason for it, though I do agree it is a bit severe.

  • here we go politics (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jjshoe ( 410772 )
    to start with, #linux is a completely different channel then #linuxhelp by far. you can NOT get in to #linux without ident while you can get in linuxhelp assuming you dont meet one of the following trojan stopping bans.


    *!~*1@*.*

    *!~*2@*.*

    *!~*3@*.*

    *!~*4@*.*

    *!~*5@*.*

    *!~*6@*.*

    *!~*7@*.*

    *!~*8@*.*

    *!~*9@*.*

    these bans are to stop a set of what looks like some type of automated scripts finding trojan'd and wingate type machines to join the channel and spew two lines off garbage and part.

    .no is not ban in linuxhelp no matter how badly i wish it was. EVERYONE i have delt with .no speaks very bad english and throws a fit if you say they need to re-word something. if they have a problem they want you to hold their hand through the entire problem (MOST other people want their hand held, but ALL the .no want their hand held) and when you tell them you wont they throw a giant fit.


    optonline.net is the only massive ban enforced in #linuxhelp due to constant trollage.

  • Change ISPs. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @10:20AM (#4563876)
    People might say it's not that easy, but it really is. There are several ISPs that operate EVERYWHERE that Sympatico does, and offers their services at a SUBSTANTIALLY lower cost. I switched over to iStop (http://www.istop.com) a few months ago, and I'm loving it.

    I suggest you inquire in the newsgroup can.internet.highspeed about a good ISP in your area, I'm sure Bob Carrick will point you towards his excellent ISP website.

    If you're wondering why iStop doesn't offer 3.5mbit residential atm, it's because Bell raised the price for all new lines, and iStop decided they'd rather stop offering the service for new customers than charge old customers way less than what they charge new customers. Ralph Doncaster, owner of iStop, has said that he fully expects Bell Nexxia to once again offer the lower prices for 3.5mbit lines, so he'll be able to offer it again in the future.
    • Oh, Ralphie Doncaster, is that what he's up to now. I went to university with him. Personally, I'd count my fingers after dealing with him.

      Looks like he's up to to his favourite university games too (he got in hot water at Acadia for network mischief): [usenet] [google.com] `AIDS and gays conflict with Ralph's religion'? I never noticed any religion in him deeper than lucre (although of course people can change, libel-deflecting disclaimers etc).

  • haha (Score:1)

    by angelo ( 21182 )
    A channel I am on 24/7 on undernet has the following bans:

    *.at, *.mx, *.nz, *.tw, *.nl, *.no, *.si, *.br, *.gov, *.ca, *.tr, *.au, *.ro

    Wide enough bans? These bans are mostly because ppl come in and claim we took 'their' channel, when we have been there for many years. Perhaps they have their nets confused.
  • This isn't just a problem in IRC channels, on messageboards you'll often get a few trolls hell bent on crap flooding the forums (wait... this is Slashdot why am I saying something that's gotta be freaking obvious. Achem)

    Anyways, what I certainly think might be nice is to have an RBL-like system somewhere that scans for open proxies and automatically blacklists them. When your server recieves a connection, it just sticks .rbl.openproxy-rbl.org or whatever on the end of the IP and sees if there's a response. If there is it drops the connection like it's carrying the plague (or Code Red as the case might be). Simple, and easy to cache seeing as you can just have a local BIND running to cache results for hosts who commonly connect.
    • Many EFNet IRC servers (though not all) already scan for open proxies (checking tcp ports 23, 8080, etc). However, not all do, and invariably you end up with a huge crapflood net on a single server (as was running around on EFNet a while back when they set their new max usercount record).

      Unfortunately, there's not really much you can do about this. Some channels have bots that scan for open proxies when you join, but generally by the time this scan is complete the spam/crapflood has already taken place.

      Also, not all of these are open proxies. You'd be amazed how many compromised windows hosts there are out there (what with code red 2 leaving cmd.exe laying around and all) that end up running proxies on oddball ports or even specially made IRC crapflood drones. Again, not much you can do about this (other than bitch out the sysadmin at the other end, who if they haven't noticed and corrected the situation by now probably doesn't care).
  • No, this is not off-topic, or a troll. That's just a grabber.

    Why I ask that question is I want people to look at the rating system of Slashdot. Do valuable comments usually get modded up? I believe so. And the trolls, the annoyances get modded down.

    Now, let's apply this in real time. Let's apply this to IRC. I know, it sounds flawed, so you need someone (with integrity) at the top to select the first moderators. And users of IRC would have points based on what they say. This could be run by a bot, or whatever. Insightful, and intelligent readers and posters (good grammar, non-offensive language, etc.) would get 'modded up'. Script kiddies get modded down.

    Also, channels should ALWAYS be moderated. A moderation bot can demoderate the fools. I find this far more effective than bans and kicks. Usually, there's an auto-rejoin feature that I'm sure you're all aware. Kick ... boom, the idiot is back. Not a very powerful reinforcement of a channel/network's rules.

    But, you presume guilt. You make people apply for a nick and auto-voice, and suddenly, there's a lot tighter control. One has to register to use this community. It becomes a priviledge.

    As for the script kiddies... well, they're harmless. Auto /ignore does wonders. Well, if you have it. I don't. That's when you need good ops or intelli-bots.
    • agreed. the slashdot (& kuro5hin) moderation systems do seem to work well. i dunno how well it would work in real time on an IRC system tho...but its far better than randomly banning entire friggin countries.

  • Official Response from #linux (Score:5, Funny)

    by raduga ( 216742 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @12:48PM (#4565107)
    *** poptix is poptix@techmonkeys.org (&#183; Matthew S. Hallacy &#183;)
    *** on channels: @#linux #icons_of_vanity
    *** on irc via server irc.secsup.org (Insert Tagline )
    > poptix: do you have an official response to the Slashdot story I can send them?
    > speaking on behalf of efnet #linux operators?
    <poptix> radtuna: sure 'Canada sucks'
    <poptix> ;)
    • nataku is meyowith@d150-107-74.home.cgocable.net * Foo
      nataku on @#niagara
      nataku using lik-m-aid.ca.us.blitzed.org the CANDY that pours
      nataku has identified for this nick
      nataku has been idle 5mins 26secs, signed on Wed Oct 30 10:20:27
      nataku End of /WHOIS list.

      God Bless cogeco and their un canadian address!
      better than that NFLS-150.182.83.on.home.ca
      (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada)
      They spelt out your location for a good year or two for anyone to know it.

  • #linux policy (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an operator in #linux on EFNet I feel I should chime in. We do not have a ban on *sympatico.ca, the only ban we have related to sympatico is Kitchener-HSE-ppp*.sympatico.ca. It is far more likely that you attempted to join on a system account or do not have identd working. A quick search on google will find our homepage with channel rules and howto's, including why we require identd and resources on installing it. And lets not forget that #linux is not a bunch of operators who are power happy. We volunteer our time to help people with linux. We help hundreds of people every day, and our "draconian" rules are what keep the channel flowing. It is not easy to work in a channel with 125 people doing whatever they want to do, so make sure that people follow some basic rules. If we see repeated abuse from an ISP our policy is to contact that ISP and work towards a resolution that does not require the banning of a large group of people. If we cannot work something out we will ban that ISP, however, usually a few weeks of getting banned from the channel on join will discourage the most pissed off kiddie, and when that ban is no longer in use it is removed. I would also like to state that most of the people I have heard complain about our policies are those that join the channel for a bit of handholding. If you join please remember that we are not paid to help you, and demands are not appreciated. We take special care not to ban out of hand, so if you are banned you did something wrong. http://www.efnetlinux.net/rules.html

    • Re:#linux policy (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Recently I tried to access #linux on efnet and I here is what I get:
      --- NoHaXoR sets ban on *!*@*.br
      --- You have been kicked from #linux by NoHaXoR (banned: perm Sorry, too many problems with Brazilian users perm)
      And you guys say your rules are not "draconian". I think that banning an entire country is just plain wrong, and banning a country with such a big number of linux users like Brazil is a shame. We do have a lot of script kiddies, but hey, so does the USA or any other country with a considerable number of internet users. The channel is yours and there is nothing I can do about it. But such a rude policy send away many valuable linux users.

    • Re:#linux policy (Score:2, Informative)

      by mnmn ( 145599 )
      The very method of banning people using their ip or domain is wrong. Ive been behind multiple domains that have been banned by various channels and irc servers because ONE person did something undesirable. In Pakistan, there is a government-run ISP that hosts hundereds of thousands of people behind ONE ip address. Dont expect anyone from Pakistan at least to be a part of your channel.

      As a result of such banning practices, Ive quitted using IRC in the first place. Most of my discussions are through yahoo messenger, newsgroups and mailing lists. IRC's technology, or at least its operators' mindsets arent keeping up with the technology....

      And please dont give me I'm not running an ident server. I tried various ident settings, fake and real, and even tried using a personally-registered domain.. but either they ban blocks of IP or reverse domain resolutions dont work for personal domains unless you fork out $600 per month for a business internet account. Go check out other channels related to linux and ask the people in there why they arent in your channel
      • The very method of banning people using their ip or domain is wrong./EM

        Then what, pretell, is your solution? I see lots of people crying about how large bans are a sin, but no solutions to the problem offered.

  • I ran into this two years ago... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I couldn't access a few channels that I wanted to access because the entire sympatico domain was blocked. My workaround was to just go through another system, but that is quite annoying.

    I have since moved and no longer use sympatico so it is no longer an issue. Although come to think of it, I don't think I've even used IRC since.
  • If your using mIRC 6, you can go through a proxy to change your IP address, I know of a few proxys that Efnet, Dalnet and Quakenet don't detect. I'm not sure if Efnet and Dalnet allow it,Q uakenet doesn't allow it, but you can still do it. Here is one that Quakenet can detect, i'll give another one out to you if you email me, but if I gave it out publicly I doubt it'd be fast anymore. fll-vodsl61-cust204.mpowercom.net and use port 3128
  • It is because sympatico spams like crazy.

    I have at times put *!*@*.sympatico.com into my IRC shitlist to prevent Sympatico users from being in any of my 10 or so channels.

    It's quite simple: If your ISP doesn't stop spammers from abusing IRC, it will be klined/shitlisted/banned/prohibited. And if the ISP provides dynamic IPs, the WHOLE isp will have to be banned instead of just the offending IP(s).

  • I guess Kyle's mum was right.

  • I haven't seen anyone mention the performance and usability impact of floods. Keep in mind that there are a finite amount of resources on an IRC server, just like any other system. If someone decided to crapflood in a channel, the server has to send that to any users in that channel, one by one. EFNet and other large networks have pretty big demands on bandwidth and processor usage. The more these resources are allocated to a crapflood, the less resources are available for legitimate traffic. Some may call this a Denial of Service attack. Personally, if I see something like this, I stop it immediately. Unfortunately, the only way a user is identified is by their nickname, and their user@host. If a flood is coming from many different hosts with some portion in common, the most efficient solution is to ban everything matching that protion. It takes less time and puts less stress on the server as it doesn't have to match 20 different hosts, only the one. This is simply a matter of server performance.

    This follows as well with usability. If you have 20 clients, each spewing lines of bogus data every second, no one else can see what's going on in the channel. I'll go out on a limb and say that there is no maybe about it. This IS a DoS attack by definition. For those of you who think that making a channel +m will solve the problem, think again. I have seen join/part floods and /nick floods as well. The only solution for the channel operator is the ban. Flood bots from multiple hosts and dynamic IPs make this impossible to do in a fair manner. Wide bans are sometimes needed to maintain usability of the system.

    Let me try to give a real world example. Let's look at a large scale riot. There will be people actually doing illegal acts (damaging property, endagering public saftey, etc.) and innocent bystanders. The police will do their best to stop the rioters while leaving the bystanders alone. However, the number if rioters outnumber the number of police officers. So, the police shoot tear gas into the croud to pacify them. Do any bystanders get hit with the gas? Of course. There is just no way around this. This is how the world works.

    Here is the bottom line. IRC is a priviladge, not a right. You do not own the equipment. The administrators are kind enough to allow you to use their equipment, free of charge. They donate their time to making sure everything runs smoothly. As is true in society, to have things running smoothly, some rules need to be made, and rules are useless without consequences. Break the rules, face the consequences. Yes, sometimes innocents get hit with these consequences. No one said life, in the real world or otherwise, was fair. Anyone who can solve these problems to everyone's satisfaction will have created a utopian society. That just isn't possible, given human nature (IMHO anyway).
    </rant>
    • You could fight fire with fire, not a long term or ethical soulution. But lots of script kiddys are only running Win9x on dialup and stuff like that with no firewall. You could just send them large ping packets from all the relays. Vallah... They cant do anything...

      Of cource it is unethical, not nice to ISP's and so on. So i dont suggest doing it. But it could be done. I was DDossed the other day so i would not do this because i know how tough life is on dialup :D

      But banning is a good soulution. But a problem being skript kiddys using proxys, I know because of being in highschool there are scriptkiddys here who just spam irc channels and stuff. That if i wanted to chat the hosts would be banned which is annoying. Also the proxy server at my school was badly configured and allows external hosts to use it. Script Kiddys use these most of the time to get in as you all probably know. So the soulution for "Trustworthy Computing" (LOL) is smarter admins in the long run.
      • Life can be tough even on a largish pipe. I have a pretty decent DSL connection (well, downlink is good, but uplink is limited to 15k/sec) and have been DDoSed right off the net. Grabbed 15 Korean IPs in a 1.5 second packet capture. All because I banned someone. When he let up, he told me not to ban him again or he'd do it again. As you can see from this little example, banning is not really a good solution either. If someone is determined enough, they will get you. At this point, the only thing you can do is e-mail the administrator of their ISP. In this case, I e-mailed the ISP and the university this guy was coming from as well as the admin of the Korean ISP where the attack appeared to have originated from. I only got a response back from the university admin. Actually, I'm surprised I even got that response. To date, that's the only abuse report I have sent that was replied to. Your conclusion is quite correct. Smarter admins are needed, not only on the IRC end, but ALSO on the ISP end. They need to understand that they are allowing problems to happen when they don't implement source routing at the router among other things. I think they just don't really care what their users are doing. Just as long as they get paid.

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