WyldRyde IRC Network

Spam Tripled In A Week Thanks To Szirbi Botnet

2008-07-01T01:35:46-05:00

The volume of malicious spam has more than tripled in one week, according to new research from Marshal’s TRACE team.

The most common campaign Srizbi is using at present is a ‘stupid’ theme that tries to hook users by including the first part of their email address in the subject line along with the suggestion that they look stupid in a video. Users are often quick to investigate the potentially embarrassing footage before they consider the true malicious nature of the message.

Another recent campaign from Srizbi is based on the social networking phenomenon of connecting to old acquaintances online. It targets the Classmate.com service by using its name in malicious spam with subject lines such as “You have one new message. Classmates” and “Friends waiting for you Tomorrow! Classmates”. Once the recipient clicks on the link, they are taken to a fake page that resembles the actual Classmates.com website where they are directed to run a supposed Flash video player. When users click on the link, they are prompted to download an executable file that infects their computer.

Copyright (c) 2008 - WyldRyde IRC Network. All rights reserved. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only and may only be viewed in an RSS reader or feed aggregator that does not display ads or in a similar web-based RSS reader that does not display ads and is protected by password. If it is being displayed on a web site please email usrbingeek@gmail.com. WyldRyde IRC Network also reserves the right to require you to cease distributing these feeds at any time for any reason.

P2P Botneter Pleads Guilty

2008-06-30T00:16:58-05:00

Jason Michael Milmont, 19, has plead guilty to masterminding a botnet to obtain thousands of victims' personal data, reports Wired.com. The attack is described as a first;

"It's the first time that we know of that peer-to-peer software was used as the infection point," Hsu said in an interview with Threat Level.

The malware infection became commonly known as the Nugache Worm, which embedded itself in the Windows OS.

According to the plea agreement, the worm was installed in various ways. The first incarnation of infections came from a website Milmont created that offered free installation of Limewire, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing program. He embedded that software downloads with his malware.

Milmont is facing up to five years imprisonment and must pay $73,000 in restitution.

If you play around with botnets you eventually get caught and get sent to jail.

Rubbermaid Botneter Gets 41 Months In Jail

2008-06-29T03:07:35-05:00

Federal Prosecutors in Pensacola, Florida have announced that Robert Matthew Bentley, 21, of Panama City, Florida, was sentenced to 41 months in jail, ordered to perform three years of supervised release after serving his prison sentence, and pay $65,000 in restitution, reports The Register.

In March, Bentley, who sometimes went by the alias LSDigital, pleaded guilty to two felony counts related to his botnet activities, which inflicted more than $150,000 worth of damage on Newell Rubbermaid. Starting as early as December 2006, Bentley and several unnamed co-conspirators installed customized bots on hundreds of the company's computers. The malware generated so much traffic on Rubbermaid's servers that its network stopped functioning.

New infections from the attack were being detected as recently as March, four months after Bentley was arrested. Federal agents continue to investigate the uncharged suspects. At least one of them lived in Philadelphia.

This prosecution was part of the FBI's Operation Bot Roast. Bot Roast 1 and Bot Roast 2 netted dozens of botneters and pinpointed more than a million victimized computers.

If you play around with botnets you eventually get caught and get sent to jail.

New Phishing/Storm Worm Variant Spreading

2008-06-28T23:16:39-05:00

US-CERT is warning of phishing emails using the upcoming Olympic Games and the massive China Earthquake.

The emails contain a link to malicious website that contains a video file may execute malicious code which infects the user's system, reports US-CERT.

Reports, including a posting by Symantec, indicate that the following subject lines are being used. Please note that subject lines can change at any time.

The most powerful quake hits China
Countless victims of earthquake in China
Death toll in China is growing
Recent earthquake in china took a heavy toll
Recent china earthquake kills million
China is paralyzed by new earthquake
Death toll in China exceeds 1000000
A new powerful disaster in China
A new deadly catastrophe in China
2008 Olympic Games are under the threat
China's most deadly earthquake

Yet another reason to not open spam or blindly click on links without examining where they go to.

Botneter Gets Max of 20 Years In Prison And $500,000 Fine

2008-06-27T13:18:50-05:00

Gregory C. King, of Fairfield, California, plead guilty to two felony counts of transmitting code to cause damage to protected computers, reports The Register.

Gregory C. King, of Fairfield, California, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony counts of transmitting code to cause damage to protected computers. King, an irascible hacker who used monikers including Silenz, SilenZ420 and Gregk707, faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison and a fine of $500,000, although his plea agreement calls for him to spend two years behind bars and pay restitution to his victims. Sentencing is scheduled for September 3.

King's distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on CastleCops and KillaNet Technologies were so potent that the sites and their service providers sustained as much as $70,000 in damage, according to court documents. Unlike more sophisticated hackers who take pains to cover their tracks, King frequently taunted his victims in online chat rooms even as he flooded their servers with as much as 1 gigabyte of data per second.

When you play around with botnets you eventually get caught and go to jail. Though two years sounds very lenient to me for the damage and stress King caused.

Why was I censored?

2008-06-26T17:22:47-05:00

Foul or vulgar language may not be appropriate for all channels and some may even activate a mode which will automatically censor all language that is not suitable for children and replace it with "<censored>".

The person who is using foul language and is automatically being censored doesn't see their words replaced with "<censored>", however everyone else sees "<censored>".

This automatic censor mode is mode +G. G stands for G-Rated chat.

To enable it, channel operators may use the following command:
/mode #channel +G

It may be disabled by channel operators with the command:
/mode #channel -G

To prevent malicious users from easily finding ways around the censor, WyldRyde does not share or publish the list of the censored words. However, if you see words being used in a G-Rated chat that you feel should also be added to the censor list please /join #help and ask for a WyldRyde Admin.

How do I automatically voice users using services?

2008-06-26T01:33:50-05:00

Some channels might prefer to voice all users that join a chat or only voice registered users that join. Auto-vocing only registered users maybe an affective way to manage your chat if you want to keep your channel moderated and prevent anonymous trolls from causing trouble.

Other channels will auto-voice everyone and then devoice trouble makers instead of kicking them. However, if this is all you do, devoiced users could rejoin the chat and re-obtain voice automatically.

You may voice every user that joins your channel with the following command:
/msg chanserv AUTOVOICE #channel all

You may voice every REGISTERED user that joins your channel with the following command:
/msg chanserv AUTOVOICE #channel reg

To disable auto-voicing use:
/msg chanserv AUTOVOICE #channel off

To enable chat moderation use:
/mode #channel +m

To disable chat moderation use:
/mode #channel -m

Trillian Users Encouraged To Update

2008-06-26T00:23:49-05:00

If you're running a version of Trillian older than version 3.1.10.0 you're encouraged to upgrade immediately.

While there is currently no widely known vulnerabilities affecting Trillian on IRC there are several disclosed vulnerabilities in Trillian's MSN and AIM support protocols that could allegedly be used to remotely inject malicious code on to any PC running Trillian and connected to those networks.

WyldRyde Staff Promotions Announced

2008-06-18T19:36:56-05:00

We're happy to announce the following WyldRyde Staff members have been promoted today:

Justin and Ryan have been made Services Admins.

Admiral_Justin, Kat, mandy, therock247uk are now Services Opers.

For a complete listing of the staff please see our WyldRyde IRC Network Staff page.

XChat Update for Windows and Linux Released

2008-06-17T10:41:02-05:00

XChat.org has released version 2.8.7c of XChat for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and 2.8.6 for Linux.

2.8.7c for Windows corrects a security issue that affects users that have set Internet Explorer as their default web browser or are browsing the web with it while XChat is running. According to XChat.org that the exploit is not possible if Firefox is your default web browser.

Linux change log and links to download XChat for Windows or Linux are in the full post after the jump.

WyldRyde Terms of Service Updated

2008-06-06T00:28:55-05:00

Every now and then we update the WyldRyde IRC Network Terms of Service to ensure that they properly disclose how we expect our users to conduct themselves while using the Service.

Most of the changes published today center around protecting user privacy, preventing child solicitation and exploitation, and better describing what is disruptive behavior. For example, we now throughly explain that sharing any type of private information about others is prohibited. We also reorganized the policies dealing with children and teens so they're more noticeable and easier for our younger users to understand.

However, the changes aren't limited to the areas above, we've made a number of small changes throughout, so it's a good idea for you to reread the Terms of Service completely. Remember, if you do not agree to the Terms of Service, do not connect or disconnect now and do not reconnect!

We value input from our users. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions please join #help and ask for a WyldRyde Global Administrator.

UPDATE:

Jun 06, 2008 01:26AM EDT (UTC-5):
There seems to be some confusion about, "Adults may not engage in Private Messages or Notices with anyone under 18 years of age;" This language has always been in the Terms of Service however we did add, "or Notices" today. This was not in response to a specific problem however we are obligated to protect minors from inappropriate contact by adults. It is only enforced when we receive a verified complaint that an adult is actively engaging in [inappropriate] private conversations with children.

mIRC 6.32 is out

2008-05-22T15:39:45-05:00

The latest version of mIRC, version 6.32, was released this week. mIRC is the leading IRC Client for Windows.

According to the mIRC web site this update includes over 50 changes and fixes.

In particular, mIRC can now handle longer nick names, channel names, and messages, as well as longer variable values in the scripting language.

Various other changes include:

Added support for network-specific window position saving.
Fixed mouse wheel handling of scrolling with high resolution mice.
A "Check for Updates" option has been added to the mIRC Help menu to automatically check for new versions of mIRC.
Optimized INI file handling to only update those parts of a file that have changed. This decreases file writes and speeds up a number of features in mIRC, including USB drive usage.
Improved display speed of text in all windows.
Fixed multi-byte text-wrapping display issues.
Fixed and optimized a number of @window display features, including the way tabstops are handled.
Improved unicode support in the $mp3() identifier.

Fantasy Commands Expanded (BETA)

2008-04-18T02:53:00-05:00

Remembering IRC commands just got easier and using them will be quicker than ever on WyldRyde. That's because the most commonly used ChanServ, BotServ, and NickServ commands are now available as shorter and easier to remember Fantasy Commands!

For example, you may now tack on a message to the end of your topic with !tappend. Even add an AOP or VOP or alter your ACCESS list.

The expanded Fantasy Commands are part of a beta test and we appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

We are also seeking volunteers to help improve the Fantasy Commands documentation.

Please note: A BotServ Bot (Free) must be assigned to your channel for the Fantasy Commands to work and Fantasy must be enabled.

XChat for Windows 2.8.7a has been released

2008-04-16T09:45:19-05:00

XChat.org has released version 2.8.7a of XChat for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP.

Change log:

Fixed a possible crash if too many characters were typed or pasted into the input-box (this affected 2.8.7 only).
Fixed logging if the global setting was OFF and you turned it ON for individual channels.
Python scripts will now also be auto-loaded from C:\Program Files\XChat\Plugins\*.py.
Fixed a Python crash [1931579] where the word array contained more than 28 words.
/Ignore <nick> will now automatically add !*@* to be more user friendly.
Fixed: Changing settings in a channel's right-click menu while that channel wasn't the front-most used to fail.
The TCL plugin now requires ActiveTCL 8.5.

Note: X-Chat is open source and is licensed under the GPL and you can find several non-offical builds that are free.

How To Report A Predator

2008-04-16T00:48:46-05:00

If you know about a child who is in immediate danger, risk or you require an urgent response, you must call your local police or law enforcement agency.

If someone on WyldRyde should start to make you or someone else you know feel uncomfortable and you suspect they could be a predator please contact a WyldRyde Staff member in #help or type !911 in a WyldRyde chat immediately.

You may also report suspected predators to the following agencies or groups:

USA: 1-866-DHS-2-ICE/1-866-347-2423 or CyberTipline.
Canada: Virtual Global Taskforce
UK: Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre .
Australia: Virtual Global Taskforce
Italy: Virtual Global Taskforce
All other locations: Call your local police or law enforcement agency.

WyldRyde IRC Network fully cooperates with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our services for illegal activities such as child solicitation and dissemination of material harmful to minors.