Re: Patch: Ident-Stuff included in bans

[Richard Fuchs <dfx@gmx.at>]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 07:49:19PM +1000, Peter Zelezny wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 03:46:43 +0200
> Stefan Scholl <stefan.scholl@web.de> wrote:
> 
> > Currently the ident stuff (~, +, ...) in the username is removed
> > and a "*" is set in front of all usernames in the ban mask.
> > 
> > I know, this was my fault. I've provided the patch for this. But
> > it's no good idea. Don't know why nobody has complaint really
> > loud.
> 
> Isn't it better how it is? Now a user could join another server without
> identd and avoid the ban.

It greatly depends on the situation. The current algorithm (remove ~ if
present, prefix *) is usually the default ban mask in IRC clients. It works
ok in some situations, but in others it's a bad idea, especially when
dealing with certain large ISPs which have very coarse hosts (e.g. AOL,
they all look the same, or even worse some local ISPs, where half of the
users of a huge country-specific channel use the same ISP).

Imagine a large channel populated by many AOLers (the horror). Now let's
say another AOLer with the username of just "e" (or "~e") joins the channel
and starts making trouble to get banned. When he succeeds, the resulting
ban would be "*!*e@*.ipt.aol.com", banning a rather large amout of
(*cough*) innocent AOL people. I've seen this happen quite a few times.

Almost all users from the problematic ISPs can choose whatever username
they like anyway, so putting the username into the ban is sort of
pointless. In the above scenario, a ban of "*!*@12345678.ipt.aol.com" would
probably be best (i.e. ban the exact host and nothing else), because that
way the offender would have to at least reconnect his modem (every other
ban mask could be avoided more easily). Since that bans a dynamic IP which
"expires" after a while, this ban would have to be removed after a while,
say, one hour. It's impossible to keep users from such ISPs out of a channel
permanently without a semi-intelligent script or bot, and even then it's
hard.

However, this ban mask causes problems in other situations, for example
large multi-user hosts or shell boxes, in which case the current ban mask
would be better (but even then it's arguable).

This is just one of the many shortcomings of the IRC protocol without easy
resolution...

Richard
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Posted By:     Richard Fuchs <dfx@gmx.at>