[Announce] IRC announcements

[Maria Blackmore]

Hi All,

I'm happy to announce many things with respect to the LinuxChix IRC server
relating to the recent upgrades.

Firstly, the IRC server is now equipped with an open proxy scanner.
This will check any host on the internet that it sees connections from
to see if they are using an open proxy, whilst simultaneously checking
them against the EFnet abusive hosts DNSBL (http://rbl.efnet.org/),
the Tor DNSBL (http://www.sectoor.de/tor.php) and the DroneBL
(http://dronebl.org/). If any of the open proxy scans comes up
positive, or they are blacklisted by any of the realtime blacklists
the client will be immediately banned from the server for one day.

Secondly, with the new ability to block users from open proxies
automatically, there is no-longer any requirement for the main channel
to be moderated. It has therefore been removed! (The moderation, not
the channel)

SSL is now available on the IRC server on port 6697. Unfortunately the
certificate is self-signed at the moment, so you may have to turn off
validation in your IRC program to successfully connect. However, this
will ensure that your connection cannot be snooped. For the paranoid
amongst us the certificate fingerprint (SHA1) is
02:83:FB:B6:F7:C3:CB:0B:41:90:98:37:24:79:08:BC:B8:8A:86:0C ;)

As another line of defence against abusive users, the server now
supports caller-id. This is a server-side ignore mechanism and comes
in two varieties. Both varieties function by blocking messages from
any users who attempt to send you a private message, in response they
receive a notice informing of this, whilst once a minute you receive a
notice saying someone is trying to get in touch with you. Whilst this
is in progress you won't see anything from the blocked user apart from
the one-minutely message until you "accept" then by sending "/accept
<theirnick>" or in some clients "/quote accept <theirnick>" from your
IRC program. That means you no longer have to listen to abusive
nutjobs during the gap between them turning up and being splatted! The
two flavours are "hard" and "soft". The "hard" version applies this to
all users, the "soft" version only applies this to users you can't
already see in a channel. To turn this on, set user mode +G for soft
or +g for hard. If your client won't let you do this yourself, use
"/mode <yournick> +G" or "/mode <yournick> +g" respectively. Just
remember that the accept list isn't remembered between connections so
you may want to add these commands to your clients initialisation if
you make use of it.

More ports are available, if you find trouble connecting from your
location - we now accept connections on ports 6665 to 6669 and port
7000 for normal connections, as well as 6697 for SSL. Whilst we do not
allow connections from open proxies and Tor, we do allow connections
from closed proxies, shell servers and the Mibbit IRC service
(www.mibbit.com) so if you find a message saying that you have
exceeded the number of allowed connections just drop an email to
irc-admin at linuxchix.org and we will increase the limits for whatever
you happen to be using. The limits are only enforced to stop people
from loading the server with many drones to come and make our lives
miserable.

If you have any questions about any of the above, please email
irc-admin at linuxchix.org or raise the issue on the volunteers list.

Thanks,
Maria

--
Maria Blackmore
Professional Network Fairy



-- 
Maria Blackmore
Professional Network Fairy