Re: hostmangling in new ircd

On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 01:24:34PM +0200, Mrten wrote:
> > >  if i, as a channel-op, want to report logs as evidence to a third
> > >  party, i have to ask the admins for help to translate the mangled
> > >  hostnames to real ones. do the admins really want to meddle in
> > >  that?
> 
> > How many times does that realistically happen?  
> 
> we wouldnt know, because admins are not involved atm.

You have ignored all that I said about me being in the largest
english-speaking channels on Blitzed for 4+ years and not really
seeing users legitimately need to do this.

Like I said it's possible there is a lot of this going on without
our knowledge but it seems unlikely to me - on Blitzed when they
have a problem they seem to come running to us pretty quickly.

> > How do you currently deal with such issues on IM networks that don't 
> > show hostnames?  IRC is virtually the only IM technology that shows 
> > users' hosts.
> 
> ICQ shows (read: 'has knowledge of') users' hosts. all IM's that have
> CTCP-like behaviour have, at one time or another. MSN-text travels over
> Microsoft servers afaik (another reason not to use it), but audio/video and
> filetransfers don't.

I argue that people do and say things that may be illegal or abusive
on other IM networks and the users of the network don't know how to
obtain the offender's real host.  All they can do is complain to the
network itself.

> > Do you want a channel mode for preventing users with masked hosts
> > from entering tube?  
> 
> sorry?

Weird, don't know what happened to my typing there.  What I meant to
say was:

Would you like a channel mode which would prevent users with masked
hosts from entering the channel, or that would show their real hosts
to ops of the channel?

> > Or one that will show their real host in
> > channels that require their real host to be shown? (I believe irctoo
> > does this? will be problematic with trying to stop users being
> > tricked into joining such channels though)
> 
> how about having chanops see the real hosts of users in their channels?
> that will still stop the ddos-kiddies and alleviates much of the other
> objections.

Yeah this is what I was trying to ask you before.

This can be done, has been done on irctoo I believe.  The only
tricky bit would be that there would have to be some way for the
user to be warned that their real host will be visible to chanops in
a given channel before they join it.  Otherwise someone malicious
can create such a channel and invite their victims to it.

Can you think of a good way?  It could be done by adding yet another
user mode, but that's maybe getting rather ridiculous...

> > >  what does *the network* have to gain from hostmasking users?
> > >  aren't we making it ourselves more difficult?
> 
> > What we're gaining is that we're getting ever more demands for masked
> > hosts and when we say we don't have the feature, they go to a
> > network that does, and it's getting harder and harder to justify why
> > we don't provide the feature.
> 
> if its such a demanded feature, why isn't it in bahamut 1.8 already?

Because bahamut is written for dalnet and dalnet is opposed to the
feature.  There are other IRC networks bigger than dalnet that are
not opposed to the feature, but we don't like their ircds.

I'm not going to waste my time trying to justify that we really do
get heaps of requests for this.  I sit in #help and answer the
people who ask for this stuff so I know how many requests we get and
I do have an idea how many people have left to other networks that
do have the feature.

> > Also in channels like the maroc ones their users are being
> > terrorised by kiddies who DDoS if they don't get chanops and we can
> > do nothing to help.
> 
> (ah, the "terrorised"-meme)

Are you suggesting I'm making it up?  I don't know what you do on
IRC but if you're going to comment on how something will affect the
network it has to be based on the real uses of the real users in a
lot of different channels that amounts to more than just a couple of
semi-private friendly hangouts.

As I say I regularly visit all larger channels and spend a lot of
time dealing with users in #help and elsewhere, and have done on
Blitzed for the length of its existence, and on other networks
before it.  It's pretty offensive of you to intimate that my
experiences are somehow invalid or made up or just folk lore
repeated from irc admins of old.

Do you PERSONALLY AT THE MOMENT WITH YOUR OWN EYES see users on IRC
needing to legitimately report real host names to ISPs with such
regularity that the burden on the network would outweigh the
benefits, or was it a hypothetical issue?

Bear in mind that the user can still contact an oper and then make
the report to the ISP giving the email address of the network and
then if the ISP ever gets around to giving a damn (unlikely) then
they can get the real host from us.

It's already a miracle if an ISP takes any action based on problems
on IRC and after the ability to DDoS users is removed what is left
for ISPs to care about?  Hate speech?  Spamming?  They already leave
it to the IRC network to deal with.

> well, have them register to get a masked host. 

We have no way of authenticating who someone is until they identify
to services, which leaves a large window where their real hosts can
be seen.  To do this properly would require a lot of work either
making it so that users can be held off IRC until they're
authenticated to services, or else writing a new authentication
system in the ircd just for hostmasking.

> if you have someone that blackmails you you're fucked anyway. possible
> side-effect: hostmasking will shift the load of the DDosses to the network
> instead of the private user.

As admins we react differently to attacks than users do, and there
is no evidence that miscreants who would DDoS a user for chanops
will DDoS a server instead.  They do it to the users because the
users cave in, but I think most irc admins would just shut the
server(s) down until the attackers gave up or the network didn't
exist anymore.

It is possible that having this feature will attract the wrong kind
of users, just like it is possible that allowing warez channels on
the net attracts the wrong kind of user.  It's not like we can't
turn the feature off at a later date if this is seen to be the case.

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