GeekShed IRC Network
666 for Halloween!
Oct 31st
We just noticed a spooky Halloween present from all of you on our homepage:
Thanks to everyone who is following us on Twitter. If you haven’t followed us yet, what are you waiting for? And don’t forget to like us on Facebook!
2nd Birthday Celebration
Oct 24th
Today GeekShed is two years old! To celebrate our second year, we have some giveaways for you. We are giving away two $25 (USD) gift vouchers to Amazon. These prizes will be purchased after the giveaway, so if you have any particular objection to Amazon, we can make a reasonable accommodation. You can enter both giveaways, but you can only win once. Any questions? Ask in #help.
Giveaway 1: Tweet #WhyGeekShed
This first competition is designed to spread the word about the network and what we offer. Here’s what you need to do:
- Follow us on Twitter (if you don’t already).
- Post a Tweet that explains why you like the GeekShed network and include the hashtag #WhyGeekShed and the web address geekshed.net.
- After you post your Tweet, /join #twitter then copy your Tweet and paste it into the channel. Be sure to include your Twitter username.
To win, you must be a registered user on GeekShed for at least 60 days and a follower of us on Twitter. You have until midnight Hawaii time (6 AM Tuesday Eastern, 11 AM Tuesday London) to post your Tweet. You can use the Time Zone Converter to determine the specific time for where you live. The winner will be chosen randomly from the people who have posted their Tweet in the channel and meet the eligibility requirement. The prize is a $25 gift voucher to Amazon.
Giveaway 2: Like Us on Facebook
The second competition is to try to boost our user numbers through the use of Facebook. GeekShed has a new Facebook Page (to replace our old Groups page). Here’s what you need to do:
- Like us on Facebook (if you don’t already).
- Post something on our Wall about why you like GeekShed.
To win, you must be a registered user on GeekShed for at least 60 days and Like us on Facebook. You have until midnight Hawaii time (6 AM Tuesday Eastern, 11 AM Tuesday London) to Like us and post on our Wall. You can use the Time Zone Converter to determine the specific time for where you live. The winner will be chosen randomly from the people who have posted on our Wall and meet the eligibility requirements. The prize is a $25 gift voucher to Amazon.
Note that we’ll gather some of the best reasons that people post from both Facebook and Twitter into a list on the GeekShed website.
Server map updated
Oct 5th
We have just updated the server map. We have had such a massive turnover of servers in the past few months that it became very quickly outdated. You can find it at http://www.geekshed.net/servers/.
BNCs Moved
Oct 4th
We have, tonight, moved the BNCs from their previous unreliable homes onto a new server. Your previous connection credentials should work, as before. We hope the new server will be more reliable and less prone to downtime.
Any questions, ask us in #help
Any questions, ask us in #help
Mibbit Hacked
Aug 14th
We write to report emerging news of certain elements of Mibbit (an AJAX IRC client service) being hacked. The proof of hack is further backed up by Mibbit’s official statement.
Because of the nature of Mibbit’s front end, your web browser cannot connect directly to IRC. Rather, it has to connect via a Mibbit back end service in order to make a connection. This is comparable in some ways to connecting via a dodgy Russian proxy. The intermediate party (Mibbit in this case and a dodgy Russian in the case of the proxy) can view all transmissions made to IRC and do as they please with that data.
For you, as GeekShed users, this should flag up some major concerns. The first of these is that Mibbit appears to log all private messages. Mibbit has refuted these claims and stated that private messages are only logged when permission has been given by the user. GeekShed questions the legitimacy of this as both parties should surely be complicit in the logging of their conversations on a 3rd party server. We can only assume that this includes messages you sent to GeekShed’s services (NickServ, ChanServ, etc.) when registering and identifying to your nicknames and channels.
We are, as an immediate precaution, recommending that anyone who has registered their nickname or ever identified to it, using Mibbit, changes their password as soon as possible. If you are using the same password for other services such as Facebook, Twitter, E-Mail, etc. we strongly suggest that you change these passwords also to avoid these accounts being compromised.
We also strongly suggest that our users cease to use Mibbit at their earliest convenience. GeekShed offers a flash alternative and also fully supports use of the lightirc client.
To change the password of your nickname, use the following command, when you are identified to that nickname:
To change the password of your channel, use the following command, when you are identified to the channel founder’s nickname:
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to find us in #help.
Because of the nature of Mibbit’s front end, your web browser cannot connect directly to IRC. Rather, it has to connect via a Mibbit back end service in order to make a connection. This is comparable in some ways to connecting via a dodgy Russian proxy. The intermediate party (Mibbit in this case and a dodgy Russian in the case of the proxy) can view all transmissions made to IRC and do as they please with that data.
For you, as GeekShed users, this should flag up some major concerns. The first of these is that Mibbit appears to log all private messages. Mibbit has refuted these claims and stated that private messages are only logged when permission has been given by the user. GeekShed questions the legitimacy of this as both parties should surely be complicit in the logging of their conversations on a 3rd party server. We can only assume that this includes messages you sent to GeekShed’s services (NickServ, ChanServ, etc.) when registering and identifying to your nicknames and channels.
We are, as an immediate precaution, recommending that anyone who has registered their nickname or ever identified to it, using Mibbit, changes their password as soon as possible. If you are using the same password for other services such as Facebook, Twitter, E-Mail, etc. we strongly suggest that you change these passwords also to avoid these accounts being compromised.
We also strongly suggest that our users cease to use Mibbit at their earliest convenience. GeekShed offers a flash alternative and also fully supports use of the lightirc client.
To change the password of your nickname, use the following command, when you are identified to that nickname:
/NS SET PASSWORD yournewpasshere
To change the password of your channel, use the following command, when you are identified to the channel founder’s nickname:
/CS SET PASSWORD yournewpasshere
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to find us in #help.
Tonight’s Problems
Aug 1st
It’s been a rough few hours. We are sorry for this. An exploit was found in a 3rd party services module and used against us. This allowed the corruption of the access lists of 2 channels. Although it is fairly obvious from the code that an exploit caused by flawed logic exists, this has gone unnoticed for almost 3 years and it is expected that many more IRC networks will be affected by this.
We will shortly carry out a full audit of all 3rd party modules to check for similar exploits in those. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
We will shortly carry out a full audit of all 3rd party modules to check for similar exploits in those. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Welcome CornishNerd
Jul 19th
CornishNerd has recently kindly accepted our offer to join the GeekShed staff team. He will be primarily responsible for the forums in a bid to make them an active part of the community. Network administration is not an easy job and we are thankful for the time he has dedicated to us.
P.S. I realise this is the same as the post I did for Brigitte with the name and gender changed. Why reinvent the wheel, eh?
P.S. I realise this is the same as the post I did for Brigitte with the name and gender changed. Why reinvent the wheel, eh?
Welcome Brigitte
Jul 17th
Brigitte has recently kindly accepted our offer to join the GeekShed staff team. She will be primarily responsible for the forums in a bid to make them an active part of the community. Network administration is not an easy job and we are thankful for the time she has dedicated to us.
Apply to Have Your Channel Featured!
Jun 11th
Want more people to know about the fun stuff going on in your channel on GeekShed? Answer a few questions about your channel here, and we’ll consider your channel for a new feature on the GeekShed site. The idea is that every few weeks, a channel will be highlighted on the website, with details about the channel, what happens there, and other details.
There are a few requirements:
- You have to be the owner of the channel or have the full permission of the channel owner.
- You have to have an average of 10 or more different people in the channel regularly.
- The channel has to be at least 3 months old.
- The channel has to be open and public (no private or secret channels).
The GeekShed staff will choose channels to feature based on the application and observation of the channel. Acceptance is at the discretion of network staff. There is no promise or guarantee implied. To apply, just fill in the form below.
What is Identd?
Jun 4th
When you use the /whois command or /ns info on yourself, you may notice the tilde before your connection information. Here’s an example:
~ilovestig@somewhere.com
That leading tilde (~) indicates that you are not running identd on your machine. As Phil explains it, identd is an age-old service that runs on port 113 and was designed for shared shells. It’s essentially a process that confirms that you are who your ident says you are. For the full, geeky details on identd, see RFC 1413.
Basically, your client sends your required ident as part of the initiation commands when you connect to GeekShed. The server then checks to see whether you have an identd running and uses the ident reported by that in your hostmask. If the server does not find identd running on your machine, it adds the tilde (~) to your ident.
Note: don’t confuse any of this with the tilde (~) you may see in your nick list as an indication of a channel’s admins. Those are nick prefixes.
How do you enable Identd on your machine?
Many clients either have Identd built in or include the option to turn it on. Check the documentation for your particular client. Note however that there are clients that will not provide support.
| Chatzilla | See How do I enable ‘ident’? |
| Colloquy | See Enabling Identd. |
| LightIRC | No longer available for use on this network. |
| Mibbit | See ident. |
| mIRC | See Why am I unidentified and what does it matter? |
| Snak | See “The server keeps saying something about ‘Ident’ problems” on the Troubleshooting page. |
| TFlash (GeekShed’s web client) | No longer in use. |
| X-Chat | See How do I enable identd in X-Chat? |
Additional Troubleshooting Information
You can connect to GeekShed even if you cannot get identd running on your machine. You’ll just have the tilde (~) show up before your connection information. If you cannot get it to work, relax because there’s no penalty.
That said, if you investigate things further, you may find that you need to open up port 113 on your firewall or enable identd on your router. For more information, check out Section 4.3. “No identd” of IRC Connection Problems or Setting Up Identd on the IRCPolitics site.
—tengrrl