WyldRyde IRC Network

Happy Holidays From WyldRyde!

Jeff Weisbein — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:00:03 +0000

Happy Holidays from the entire WyldRyde Staff! We hope to make 2010 an amazing one! We have a lot planned, so stay tuned! The best is yet to come.

How To: Get Users Into Your Chat Room

Jeff Weisbein — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:15:27 +0000

One of the most common questions I have seen over the years I have been on IRC is “how do you get more people in your chat room?”. There are many approaches you can take to help grow your chat room – some better than others. I’m here to share with you some of the best and most effective ways to help your chat room fill up with chatters.

The first thing I typically recommend is to do a /list when you connect to WyldRyde and see what some of the larger channels on the network are and join them. Of the channels you join from the /list become acquainted with the current chatters in the room. Ideally you want to become friends with these people so they will want hang out in your channel too.
Do not spam your chat at any point! You do not want to come across as spammer because that automatically give you a bad reputation and you will never get anyone in there or worse it may be closed down due to spamming. As I mentioned in tip number one, become friends with the people in the chat room because occasionally a chat room owner will let you share your chat room in theirs so people will find out about it.
If you have a website – use it! Our new flash chat will be available soon so be sure to embed your chat room on your site! In the mean time feel free to setup a Mibbit Widget.
If you have a twitter account - use it! Share your chat room’s name and our address: irc.wyldryde.org so people can come find and join you.
If you have become friendly with someone on WyldRyde and would like to invite them to your channel you can use the /invite command (/invite nick #chatroom). Note: Please do not use this command to spam or flood users with invites if we receive reports that you are doing it we will be forced to look into the issue and possibly close your channel down after several complaints and warnings.

There are 5 easy ways you can promote your chat room on WyldRyde! I should also mention that we will be starting a new tradition – chat room of the month. What we will be doing is featuring a new chat room every month! Each month we will pick a new channel to recommend and write a blog post about the channel itself and/or any website or community it is associated with. The chat will be featured on the sidebar of WyldRyde.org and we will also tweet out the blog post which talks about the recommended chat room. We plan to start this very soon so keep an eye out!

If for whatever reason you do not want your chat room featured on WyldRyde, please just let us know and we will be more than happy to adhere to your request.

WyldRyde Website Redesigned

Jeff Weisbein — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:00:48 +0000

After many years of the same old web design on WyldRyde.org we have finally launched a completely new design for the site which we hope will last us well into the future. The new design is not completely finished, however, we felt it was complete enough to launch and make the minor changes and tweaks over the new few weeks. If you find any broken link or experience any problem with the site please let us know via our web chat.

Additionally, we should note that you may need to update your bookmarks or links to specific articles as the URL’s have changed and unfortunately it was not possible to completely redirect all of the old link structures to the new ones.

For example:

The following URL used to explain how to register a channel on WyldRyde:

http://www.wyldryde.org/a/000576.php

The same article is now found here instead:
http://www.wyldryde.org/2006/12/how-do-i-start-my-own-chatchannel/

The following URL used to provide the WyldRyde vHost policy:

http://www.wyldryde.org/a/000708.php

The same article is now found here instead:
http://www.wyldryde.org/2005/12/can-i-get-a-vhost/

We love the new design and we hope you do too! Thanks for being a part of our community and we hope to see you continue to ride on WyldRyde.

BestTechie Acquires WyldRyde

Jeff Weisbein — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:30:43 +0000

Roslyn, New York – October 24, 2009 – BestTechie Holdings, Inc. is pleased to announce it has acquired the WyldRyde IRC Network from WyldRyde Corporation. Steve Mermelstein (usrbingeek), long time WyldRyde Root Administrator and President of WyldRyde Corporation said earlier today, “I’m handing over control of WyldRyde to Jeff Weisbein and he’ll be assuming the operation of the WyldRyde IRC Network from this point forward. You’ll still be able to find me on WyldRyde but I’m planning on playing a significantly smaller role so I may fully dedicate myself to my photography.”

The acquisition of the WyldRyde IRC Network will allow BestTechie to expand its web properties which will now include three (3) websites and one (1) IRC Network. Under the ownership of BestTechie, WyldRyde will continue to grow and foster the special community that has made it what it is today.

“As a long time WyldRyde user and Global Network Administrator, I have come to understand what our users like and don’t like. I plan to make the necessary changes to create the best and most friendly environment so all of users can call WyldRyde their home.”, said Jeff Weisbein, President of BestTechie Holdings, Inc.

Unfortunately, with all of this exciting news, BestTechie is resetting the NickServ and ChanServ databases and requiring all users to re-register. What does this mean to our users? Well, it is a slight inconvenience and we are deeply sorry that it could not be avoided. However, we encourage everyone to re-register your channel(s) and nickname(s) and use a new password. Also, until otherwise noted, you will need to replace the TFlash chat embeds on your websites with another web chat service such as Mibbit (which can be configured to point to your channel on WyldRyde). We hope this will be only temporary while we attempt to find a better and more effective web chat client. If you need help with any of those tasks, please /join #help and request assistance.

In order to help smooth the transition process we have registered a number of the larger channels on WyldRyde for the channel owner’s convenience and will transfer ownership of the channel upon the owner’s request. Additionally, any nickname or channel registration disputes should be brought to the staff’s attention in #help. We ask that everyone act civilly and that you do not register a channel or nickname that belonged to someone else previously.

Lastly, please be aware that since we are changing our DNS servers it may take a while (anywhere from instantly to 48 hours) to propagate (update) on your end. You may want to consider using OpenDNS (sign up for a free account) instead of your regular ISP’s DNS servers if you do not feel like potentially waiting up to 48 hours. That being said, if you are unable to connect to the new WyldRyde servers via irc.wyldryde.org for any reason, please use one of the following IP address to connect: 76.73.58.213 or 67.223.254.182

We would also like to ask that our users please have a little more patience than usual while we have a chance to work out all of the bugs and any issues that may arise within the initial weeks of operation. We hope to see all of you continue to ride the WyldRyde!

FBI and British Law Enforcement Seeking Botnet Builders

usrbingeek — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:05:39 +0000

British Law enforcement and the FBI are actively looking for the individuals that created the largest botnet, reports World Watch from CBS News.

London’s Metropolitan Police department confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday that their e-crime unit was investigating a botnet created by Ukrainian hackers. The Met would not say what other agencies they are working with, but they do often work with other agencies on cases involving international cyber-crime, including the FBI.
CBSNews.com partner CNET reported Tuesday that Ophir Shalitin, Finjan’s marketing director, said in an interview on the eve of the RSA security conference that the gang had compromised computers in 77 government-owned domains in the U.S. and elsewhere.

[Cops Hunting Monster-Botnet Builders]

Massive Botnet found on almost 2 million PCs

usrbingeek — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:32:30 +0000

A large botnet from the Ukraine that has infected nearly 2 million computers is stunning security researchers, reports DarkReading.

The botnet, which appears to be larger than the infamous Storm botnet was in its heyday, has infected machines from some 77 government-owned domains — 51 of which are U.S. government ones, according to Ophir Shalitin, marketing director of Finjan, which recently found the botnet. Shalitin says the botnet is controlled by six individuals and is hosted in Ukraine.
Aside from its massive size and scope, what is also striking about the botnet is what its malware can do to an infected machine. The malware lets an attacker read the victim’s email, communicate via HTTP in the botnet, inject code into other processes, visit Websites without the user knowing, and register as a background service on the infected machine, for instance. The bots communicate with their command and control systems via HTTP.

[Researchers Find Massive Botnet On Nearly 2 Million Infected Consumer, Business, Government PCs]

Juvenile Botner sentenced to 11 months in prison

usrbingeek — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:59:02 +0000

A male juvenile, who has been widely known in the hacker underground by his online moniker, “DSHOCKER,” was sentenced today in federal court to 11 months in prison, to be served in a juvenile detention facility, for computer intrusion, interstate threats, and wire fraud, stemming from hacking, botnet, and “swatting” activities. In accordance with federal law, the juvenile was not publicly named.
United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan and Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation – Boston Field Division, announced that a 17-year-old male juvenile from Massachusetts was sentenced before U.S. District Court Judge Dennis F. Saylor, IV, to 11 months in prison, to be served in a juvenile detention facility, followed by two years of supervised release.
At the November 18, 2008 change of plea hearing, the prosecutor told the Court that, had the case proceeded to trial, the government would have proven that, from 2005-2008, the defendant (1) hacked into multiple corporate computer systems and took command of thousands of other computers in a “botnet” (a network of infected computers), directing them to perform cyberattacks on victim computer servers; (2) placed hoax emergency telephone calls to elicit armed police responses from SWAT (“special weapons and tactics”) police teams and others, as well as reported phony bomb threats, and (3) made fraudulent credit card purchases with stolen credit cards. His “swatting” activities created a serious risk of physical harm to innocent victims, and the multiple bomb threats caused extensive disruptions to important public services. Furthermore, the defendant’s hacking activities were disruptive to major companies’ computer systems, and they wreaked havoc on tens of thousands of computers that were compromised.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam J. Bookbinder in Sullivan’s Economic Crimes Unit and Mona Sedky Spivack of the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Ustream redesign changed ustream chat behavior

usrbingeek — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:44:59 +0000

If you had your Ustream channel page redirected to WyldRyde you were probably surprised to find out this evening that your Ustream flash chat no longer goes to WyldRyde but to Ustream’s own chat server instead.
Ustream launched a redesign minutes ago and reset all the chat rooms back to their own chat server. Apparently, Ustream says they’re no longer preforming any chat switches. However, you can keep using WyldRyde if you disable the Ustream chat room and embed the WyldRyde flash chat in your About section (Describe your show).
Please see this page for the full instructions and compatible WyldRyde flash chat code.

Services problem – ns_recover

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:45:57 +0000

WyldRyde has recently identified a problem with the core Anope module that powers NickServ’s ‘release’ command. The use of this command, in some instances, caused services to crash.
This is a known bug and Anope have already fixed it in their latest SVN release. We have made the decision to disable the module, therefore removing ns release functionality from the network. This is instead of running the SVN version of the module with the older stable code.
The decision was reached due to the fact that ‘release’ is a very obscure and under-used command. If this command is crititical to your use of the network, please let us know and we will look at re-implementing it using SVN code.
EDIT: We have compiled in the SVN version of the module. Please let us know if any issues are encountered.

Conficker Worm Targeting Microsoft Windows Systems

usrbingeek — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:07:36 +0000

US-CERT is reporting that they’re aware of widespread infection of the Conficker Worm.
The worm infects computers running Microsoft Windows via a thumb drive, a network share, or directly across the network if the host is not patched with update MS08-067.

The presence of a Conficker infection may be detected if a user is unable to navigate to the following websites:

http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=us_ghp+link_conficker_worm

http://www.mcafee.com

If a user is unable to reach either of these websites, the Conficker infection may be indicated (the most current variant of Conficker interferes with queries for these sites, preventing a user from visiting them). If a Conficker infection is suspected, the infected system should be removed from the network. Major anti-virus vendors and Microsoft have released several free tools that can verify the presence of a Conficker infection and remove the worm. Instructions for manually removing a Conficker infection from a system have been published by Microsoft in Knowledgebase Article 962007.
US-CERT encourages users to prevent a Conficker infection by ensuring all systems have the MS08-067 patch (part of Security Update KB958644, which was published by Microsoft in October 2008), disabling AutoRun functionality (see US-CERT Technical Cyber Security Alert TA09-020A), and maintaining up-to-date antivirus software.
US-CERT will provide additional information as it becomes available.

[Conficker Worm Targets Microsoft Windows Systems]