full-disclosure - Why is IRC still around?

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From: barrie at reboot-robot.net (Barrie Dempster)
Subject: Why is IRC still around?

On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 12:40 -0500, Danny wrote:
> Well, it sure does help the anti-virus (anti-malware) and security
> consulting business, but besides that... is it not safe to say that:
> 
> 1) A hell of a lot of viruses/worms/trojans use IRC to wreck further havoc?
Not as much as email does. What about that old TCP/IP do you know how
many viruses use that? according to leading antivirus vendors I believe
the official figure is "LOTS"

> 2) A considerable amount of "script kiddies" originate and grow through IRC?
Yep, I've heard they've also migrated to HTTP as well, let's get rid of that.

> 3) A wee bit of software piracy occurs?
Nothing compared to bittorrent and the other p2p networks, it's called
sharing information, if some people want to share illegal information
that's inevitable. (Do you know how many terrorists use phones to
communicate? the figures would scare your family for generations!)

> 4) That many organized DoS attacks through PC zombies are initiated through IRC?
Yeh, so we should take that communication mechanism away as they are
obviously not clever enough to use, MSN,YAHOO,JABBER,ICQ,Email,Web
Forums, BBS, Telephones, VOIP, Roger Wilco, talkd, the unix write
command, windows messaging, snail mail, Pigeons, Cups and string,
Shouting very loud, morse code, hand signals.............

> 5) The anonymity of the whole thing helps to foster all the illegal
> and malicious activity that occurs?
It's more anonymous than the other communication mechanisms on the net
is it?

> Sorry to offend those that use IRC legitimately (LOL - find something
> else to chat with your buddies), but why the hell are we not pushing
> to sunset IRC?

Sorry to offend you if I do, but based on your reasons for getting rid of IRC,
we'd have to get rid of alot of communication mechanisms. The reason IRC is
used alot for the things you've described is because it's been around for a
long time and the networks and relations built on IRC have lasted, taking it
away (which is far from possible) would only mean that all the activities
would migrate to other mediums.

Can I ask if you missed the whole shadowcrew incident? they had an IRC channel
but did alot of their stuff on a web forum... Think about it for a second what
good would closing IRC down do to prevent that?

BTW... Most OSS was also built around IRC collaboration, just have a look at
freenode and ask the currently 800+ people in #gentoo, the 700+ people in
#debian or the 300+ that are in #slackware and #fedora.

Now that you've thought it through and you want to take away a massive support
mechanism from all these people, how do you propose we do it? I tried smoking
the same drugs as you and I firmly believe magic monkeys are the solution to our
problems, I'll create a #magicmonkeys IRC channel so we can co-ordinate it.

Disclaimer: If this reply seemed like it was in jest, it may be because
I consider the original message to be a joke

Barrie Dempster (zeedo) - Fortiter et Strenue

  http://www.bsrf.org.uk

[ gpg --recv-keys --keyserver www.keyserver.net 0x96025FD0 ]

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