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CrisAndrei

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Interesting IRC question ... 500 points up for grabs


A friend uses IRC extensively ....

He asked me a little while ago an interesting question ... and I have just thought of posting it here now, and maybe get an answer to it ...

He said to me that whenever he seems to have private conversations with persons from a lot of the channels, there seem to be some people aware of what they are talking about .... in the private chats. He uses mIRC.

Is this possible, and how was that achieved and how can one combat this issue?



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Dexstar

CrisAndrei:

> He said to me that whenever he seems to have private conversations with
> persons from a lot of the channels, there seem to be some people aware
> of what they are talking about .... in the private chats. He uses mIRC.

> Is this possible, and how was that achieved and how can one combat this issue?

Well, it is *possible*, but not very likely.  IRC is inherently insecure.  Each person connects to a server, and the servers themselves are all interconnected.  Anyone between you and the server you are using, or anyone between the person you're talking with and the server they're using, or anyone between the two servers COULD monitor the network traffic and see what you're talking about.  Furthermore, anyone who operates an IRC server could log anything you say and record it forever.

However, since there are hundreds of thousands of people using IRC, with lots of private chats going on, it's just unreasonable to monitor them all.

The solution is to use a DCC chat (tricky to do behind firewalls, but still possible).  DCC means "Direct Client-to-Client", so the two people are talking directly without any IRC server involved.  That means that only people between you and the other person could listen in, which dramatically reduces the number of people who could listen in.

Another way (or to be used in combination with DCC) would be to use a client that supports some level of encryption.  Trillian does, but I'm not sure of any others, although they do exist.

HTH,
Dex*
Actually has your friend thought about the possibility that if he has a private chat his partner could be telling details to someone else, also via a private chat?
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ASKER


This is what happened:
He logged into a Undernet, and joined a motoring club channel.
There's been some arguements within the channel, at which stage, he opened a private chat with a very good friend of his.
They were talking in private about the arguement that going on in the channel, at which point, one of the other people from the channel, whom the arguement was going against, started posting their private chat.

My friend got quite upset, and closed the irc client, and he's been very upset ever since, as this affected him badly.
Hence his question to me as to how this may have been achieved.....

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Dexstar

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yeah i agree.

it takes a person with packet sniffer to sniff the IRCd  ( Internet Relay Chat Deamon) Software that usually runs on linux systems.  

Im IRC operator on many irc networks and I cant really sniff the chat myself because I dont have access to most of IRCd's  
you have to be owner of IRCd yourself to find out what going on your IRCd server.  

also
using SSL connection would stop sniffers from reading your private chats.