Freenode Network Hijacked, Passwords Compromised?

tmandry writes "The world's largest FOSS IRC network, FreeNode, was hijacked (for lack of a better term) by someone who somehow got a hold of the privileges of Robert Levin, AKA lilo, the head honcho of FreeNode and its parent organization, PDPC. To make matters worse, the passwords of many users may have been compromised by someone posing as NickServ, the service that most clients are configured to send a password to upon connecting, while they reconnected to the servers that hadn't been killed. Of course, if someone was able to nab lilo's password, every user password may have been ripe for the taking. The details are still unknown, but these events raise scary questions about the actual security of FreeNode and other organizations like it."

Comments

This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if someone hijacked it, who could ever tell the difference?

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[A beautiful mind]

I have one question.

Why are you a jackass?

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[ronz0o]

And it is the type of people like YOU that piss me off. "All hackers write viruses break stuff omgwtf." Chill out. I have found many security flaws, and reported them to the proper authorities. (Fashion Bug...ie, Charming Enterprises) Making it public like this is wrong, but it should have been done on a 1 to 1 basis. People DO listen when things like this may be compromised...

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[IamTheRealMike]

In that case you are a hacker in the original sense of the word - a competent professional who Gets Things Done.

The OP was complaining about "hackers" in the ZOMG HOLLYWOOD!! sense of the word, usually people who want the thrill of Beating The Man without actually having to do anything dangerous, like getting off their seats.

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[jonoid]

So, you consider yourself a hacker but you have a LiveJournal?!

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[KiloByte]

No, it's idiots from Hollywood stealing our word and our name for nothing but an attempt to squash yet another penny from Joe Sixpack and soccer moms.
Bill's henchmen waging a rabid campaign against us don't help, too.

And remember: being a hacker doesn't mean you exploit security holes (for good or ill). It means that you employ a certain approach to programming/doing sysadmin tasks/solving physics problems/etc.

Just because a majority of the mindless part of the society fails to understand a word, the word doesn't change its meaning.

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[Lord Ender]

Have you ever been 15? Everything is a game. Especially everything on the computer. 0wning this guy's chat server feels about the same as making a slam dunk right over a bigger defender's head, then joking about his mother. Just a game.

At that age, kids have never had responsability, and so are unable to feel empathy for those who they are harming.

I was an ornry teenager once, too. I recall sending ATH0 pings, sending OOB packets, mounting unprotected file shares, and feeling a thrill every time I one-upped these older, smarter people. The internet was just a Nintendo game to me.

This kid, like the others, is no more of a jackass than any other kid his age. He will just grow out of it with time, like everyone else.

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[Anonymous Coward]

At that age, kids have never had responsability, and so are unable to feel empathy for those who they are harming.

Having responsibility and being able to feel empathy are two orthogonal things (their are plenty people with lots of responsibility and little or no empathy). And the ability to feel empathy (and to act upon it to a certain degree) comes a lot earlier than the age 15 for most people.

This kid, like the others, is no more of a jackass than any other kid his age.

What kind of silly overgeneralization is this? At 15, there were quite a few kids my age who weren't such assholes, and there were also some others who were. The latter were by far a minority in my case, although of course bullies always manage to get some following among the less strong-willed. I would at least never describe this sort of behaviour as "normal".

He will just grow out of it with time, like everyone else.

Probably, but not necessarily. Some people remain assholes all their life.

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[shish]

No, it's "hackers" in the sense of the world that the vast majority of the world's population refers to it

By that rule, the screen is "the computer", the big box to the side is "the hard drive", and the thing you stick CDs in is "the cup holder" :-/

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's not "idiots from Hollywood" taking "our" name. It's the majority of the population using the word in a certain way.

Just because a majority of the mindless part of the society fails to understand a word, the word doesn't change its meaning.

In short, yes, it does.

I agree. But, some parts of the language are always in flux: "LOL" becomes "roflmfao" or "zomg rofl", "elite hacker" becomes "leet hax0r" becomes "31337 h4x0rz", "Own" -> "0wn" -> "p0wn3d", "crap" -> "gay" -> "ghey", the list goes on. You know this stuff is always going to be in flux, because it's mostly people from the younger generation who use language alone to make them sound cool.

In general, I acknowledge that both "convoluted cogitations" and "r0x0r your b0x0rs" are as correct as the English I'm using.

But, there are a few evoutions (bastardizations) of English that bother me a lot. One is misuse of apostrophies. It's not that hard -- "it's" means "it is". If you can replace "it's" with "it is", use an apostrophie. If you can replace "its" with "your" and have the sentence still make sense, don't use an apostrophie.

Another is the misuse of the word "hacker". Most of the time, when language evolves, the original meaning is not lost -- for instance, it's ok to use "shredder" to refer to a snowboarder, because most people won't be confused when you talk about the "shredder" that sits over a trash can and destroys documents. The problem is that while people haven't forgotten that "to hack" can also mean "to chop", people who know about the Hollywood Hacker will have completely forgotten about the MIT hacker and the Perl hacker. And we don't really have a better word for either of those.

Really. Replacing the MIT hacker with the word "prankster" is akin to replacing the Perl hacker with the word "coder". It doesn't do justice -- hackers are fundamentally different than most "programmers" or "coders". Hackers are neither software engineers nor codemonkies, though they may act as one for work.

I don't think nearly as much is lost when you replace "hacked in" with "broke in", or "hacker" with "cracker".

I don't often evangelize, as much as I love Mac/Linux. I realize that even if I'm 100% right and Windows is utter crap, nothing I say beyond explaining what Linux is (to those who don't know what an OS is) will make them switch. But the Hollywood Hacker is something I take personal offense at. I frequently call myself a hacker and clarify the term shortly after -- "What you call a 'hacker' is really a 'cracker'. The word 'hacker' has to do with a specific kind of clever programmer, and how the same cleverness can apply to other things."

Its as much a true mistake of language as the first word of this sentence.

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[stonecypher]

Words mean whatever people say they mean. It's the very definition of 'tautology'.

This is simply false. Words have an important historical usage context which is not discarded simply because one generation makes the mistake of listening to one badly educated entertainer. I'm not sure where this myth comes from, exactly, but I know not one single linguist who falls short of disgust for the legion of armchair quarterbacks professing this supposed deep understanding of the nature of the lexicon without ever having taken a linguistics class.

Grandparent is, in fact, correct. Words do not change simply because 1/4 of the population is a bunch of douchebags who don't know how to crack a book. When you're 50 and you watch these mistakes melt away in favor of the next generation's crop of errors, and begin to realize that these "changes" are impermanent, because they're merely errors, perhaps you'll begin to understand.

Linguistics is a science with a statistical and mathematical underpinning. Please do not further comment on its nature until you have at least a passing familiarity therewith, thank you.

Re:This is why I prefer the anarchy of efnet

[Ilgaz]

I bet there are non 15 years old people who can bring down Freenode to its knees in 5 minutes of time. I bet they hate lilo too.

Thing is they WON'T do such a thing since Freenode is home of many open source projects including stuff Slashdot runs on.

It is more like locking down a ER department for fun.

Password on IRC and you're worried?

[garcia]

Ok, seriously, who here uses an important password on Freenode (or any IRC network) for NickServ? I certainly don't. Hell, my Slashdot password is more important than the one I use on IRC and the one I use here isn't even that secure...

I have no sympathy for someone that has an "at risk" password on IRC.

yeah well

[scenestar]

*Don't auto ident during connect
*Don't use multiple passwords
*Change password after someone got ahold of it
*Realise that it's just a goddamn nickname

Re:yeah well

[A.K.A_Magnet]

*Don't auto ident during connect

And if you auto-identify in your perform, do something like : /identify *pass* which is a server-side macro for "PRIVMSG NickServ@<services-fakeserver-hostname> :password".

The IRC protocol allows to send messages to Nick@server (means "send a message to 'Nick' if and only if he's on 'server'"), so you can do the same with services. Then if the Nickserv nickname is hijacked, it won't matter, because the services "fake server" cannot be hijacked without knowledge of hub configuration (C/N lines) and if ever it happens, IRC admins/opers will notice (that's not something you can't miss).

So either choose the macro (/identify) or the whole command. Or identify manually :)

Re:yeah well

[sbennett]

Unfortunately this won't work. The way Hyperion, Freenode's IRCD, is designed, server passwords not used as such get passed directly on to whoever happens to be using the nickname defined in the config as the 'identify service'. In Freenode's case, this just causes a PRIVMSG to be sent from your nick to NickServ, whichever server he happens to be using, with the identify command and password. It's no harder to hijack than a regular /msg. The same goes for the 'raw' nickserv commands, which are similarly translated to PRIVMSG.

This is compounded by the fact that due to the way Hyperion's server-hide works, it is in theory impossible for normal users to know which server another client is using, so '/msg NickServ@services.' doesn't work either.

ircd's and security

[proudhawk]

I am more that familiar with ircd and security
(having run a server network for better than 5 years).

Rule #1, the admin password is NEVER stored in nickserv.
anyone who does this deserves whatever it is they get!

its better to mod the conf file and do a command rehash
from the cli.

Re:ircd's and security

[jZnat]

Rule #2: any important administrative tasks should be done via SSH in the first place, even for IRC.

Explaining the jargon...

[kaden]

FOSS = Free and Open Source Software, in case anyone was wondering...

Re:Explaining the jargon...

[leenks]

You seriously felt the need to post that on Slashdot? :o

Re:Explaining the jargon...

[Anonymous Coward]

TY. (That means 'thank you.') Since this is posted in the IT section of /. (that's slashdot, in case you were wondering), I figured I'd explain what IT stands for. It is an abbreviation of 'Information Technology,' a field that is concerned with managing network and data infrastructure within organizations.

Re:Explaining the jargon...

[capiCrimm]

Slashdot is a popular technology-news website that can be found at slashdot.org. Just incase anyone was wondering.

Re:Explaining the jargon...

[Achra]

IANAL, but I play one on TV. I've been told to RTFM and STFU FTW.

OMGWTFBBQ.

Re:Explaining the jargon...

[A.K.A_Magnet]

After all, we aren't smarter-than-thou elitists at Slashdot, are we?

Yes we are! :) And proud of it. I understand there was some irony in your comment, but it makes me think of something else.

Something I hate on Digg is how in each thread of discussion someone feels obliged to explain everything (and how lame stories like "a super set of icons", "learning to program", etc. are posted). And why that?

The cost of joining Digg is null. You join, you digg, you reply. That's how 14 years old are now ruling Digg (while it was originally populated with slashdotters and other tech-oriented websites readers). That's Digg so-called "democracy" (except, in democracy, one is supposed [only supposed] to be mature before voting, that's why there's a minimal age, which unfortunately cannot be implemented on Digg; something great would be "you can choose up to 20 domains of expertise, can change only one every two weeks or month, and you can vote only on stories regarding your level of expertise". Plus some incentive to only have one (1) account).

Joining Slashdot is free, but there's a cost when you join: you're eaten alive by grammar and spelling nazis if you don't post correctly, you're eaten alive by an "expert" if you say something technically wrong, you receive negative mod points and get ignored, etc. That's why there are so many accounts and so few posters. And that's how Slashdot has been able to remain readable. I was no newbie when I first start reading Slashdot, but not being a newbie I already knew that you have to understand the subculture and the community first before participating (the same goes for IRC). So I actually registered and became myself a slashdotter years later. Most Diggers are newbies. That's why Digg is good for fresh news and lame for comments, while Slashdot is good for comments (but lame for fresh news). Because we're smarter-than-thou elitists.

Re:Explaining the jargon...

[EnsilZah]

This really should have been moded informative, people need to work on their sense of meta-humour. =\

spam

[Punto]

o noes, If someone got a hold of lilo's password, they could start spamming the users with useless server-wide notices nobody cares about!!1!

So Levin is just another "peer"?

[Baldrson]

You've reached freenode, a service of Peer-Directed Projects Center (PDPC).

But some "peers" are more "peer" than others, like Mr. Levin.

Welcome to Animal Farm.

Re:So Levin is just another "peer"?

[ZoFreX]

You may not know how right you are, I've been calling Freenode "Animal Farm" for weeks - Patrick McFarland (a.k.a. Diablo-D3) has been highlighting some of what's wrong with freenode and in doing so has become their "snowball" - he is literally blamed for everything that goes wrong on freenode, including the recent torbot attacks and no doubt this most recent one as well.

Re:So Levin is just another "peer"?

[Emmettfish]

Except that both lilo *and* Diablo-D3 are both utterly and completely useless. Lilo 'runs' an IRC network that totally sucks, and Diablo-D3 hits people up for money for his 'game' that has never, ever seen the light of day. I've managed a game project before, and it died (though people recently have indicated interest in bringing it back), but you don't see me spamming for money for it. You would also never see me spamming for money for a project that produces nothing.

When I was running Xiph.Org, both lilo and Diablo-D3 were spamming people for money. It's why Xiph (at least temporarily) left Freenode. Diablo-D3 waged a campaign against LinuxFund for their donations to Xiph which (did, and still does) created free and useful code for the community.

Matter of fact, back when Freenode had 'Freenode Radio,' I had given them a ton of original music to use. They played it for a while, and then took it off the air 'under mutual agreement with the artist,' which was simply a lie -- My music is public domain. The folks that made this claim were eventually caught, fessed up and apologized for lying to me and people that listened to the station. They sucked at this, too; They played my music long after they claimed to 'take it off the air,' they were just too dumb to look at the ID tags of the files.

Bob and Patrick are in the same boat. They're both useless, they're both stupid, they're both utterly ineffectual.

Don't know what to tell you, really. I don't have time for IRC anymore, but if I did, I wouldn't truck with *either* of those cats. Freenode is a black hole of idiocy, and if you really want to dive into it, go ahead -- Just don't expect logic, reason or honesty to win out over egotistical mania and deception. This may be true of *all* IRC networks, but Freenode is the only one where I've seen this kind of shit go down time and time again.

Freenode may be 'Animal Farm,' though without the Orwellian context. Lilo's just too damn stupid to play Napoleon. It's like a normal farm. Backward Farmer Bob Levin and his flock of sheep.

But I Thought Information WANTED to Be Free?

[RobotRunAmok]

D00d...?

I say we strip the DRM from all passwords! Down With Evil Password IP!!

Who's with me?

OK, compromise: Everytime we use your password, we promise to give you credit and link to your blog. Deal?

Face it, until people start making passwords available for a fair price in all nations everywhere, this kind of piracy will be rampant...

The IRCD could have helped with some of that...

[SailorFrag]

As an admin on another IRC network, I'm actually quite surprised that the ircd would let someone take the nick nickserv... or at least, if it's permitted to happen, that there isn't some alternate authentication mechanism that guarantees it only goes to a legitimate recipient (i.e. /nickserv or /msg nickserv@services.ircnetwork.net or whatever). Fortunately, my password on there is intentionally weak.

On the other hand, I understand what it's like to have compromised servers on the IRC network. I wish them the best in their efforts to get things working smoothly again. Tracking down the culprits can be exceedingly hard and time intensive, and reloading rooted servers is never fun.

I was there.

[Avillia]

Mass delinking.
Mass throttling.
Mass glining and killing.
Mass notices of DCC SEND.
GNAA denying fault.
Bantown claiming fault.
The hilarity of not being auto-removed from #wikipedia thanks to a lack of ChanServ.
Having up to 20 variations of one persons name.
Lilo being killed off with a hilarious message.
And the topic wars...

Good times.

What questions?

[supabeast!]

"The details are still unknown, but these events raise scary questions about the actual security of FreeNode and other organizations like it."

I don't think that there have been any questions about the security of anything involving IRC for a long time. Everyone with half a brain knows that IRC is a cesspool of hackers, phreakers, crackers, and script-kiddies just looking to stir up shit.

Re:What questions?

[LoadWB]

Pretty much why I quit IRC a number of years back. Not to be mistaken, IRC has many valuable functions and features -- beyond downloading warez and moviez -- but not for casual chat. If you know the specific channel to go to, you are most likely fine. But for the casual chatter, browse around open channels and you will invariably end up with mass invites, notices, spam, DOS, MSG/CTCP/DCC floods, and my favorite, the mIRC scripts sent via DCC.

I only used mIRC briefly in my IRC career. It had little to no built-in protection at the time and I went back to AmIRC (Amiga.) Using WildIRC and Kuang11, AmIRC could not be beat. Later scripts for mIRC became much more solid and advanced, and I am sure the program is much better today?

Brings back some memories, actually. Back around 1997 we used to use a simple ICMP ECHO (ping) packet with a payload of "+++ATH0". Anyone with a modem which did not follow the Hayes specification for the escape sequence (+++ followed by two seconds of "silence") would immediately hang up as the TCP/IP stack sent an ICMP ECHO RESPONSE with the same payload. Was great fun for two or three times.

Re:Good Riddance

[SailorFrag]

I was going to suggest something along those lines, but if you think about it... if the services database were compromised, even if there's hashing, then everyone's passwords might get out anyway. I don't think anything actually implied that they're stored plaintext.

I hope not, at least.

Re:Good Riddance

[Sinbios]

I'm pretty sure the idea is that they replaced NickServ with something else that intercepts the passwords when users tried to identify.

the cracker /nick'd to "nickserv"

[ailaG]

if you can pose as nickserv, some people will send you their password, thinking you're the real nickserv bot. the original identification command is to PM nickserv your password, assuming that nickserv is a nice bot that won't tell anyone. now, if someone poses as our nice little bot..

Nickserv passwords.

[me22]

It says "the passwords of many users may have been compromised by someone posing as NickServ".

This doesn't mean that someone found a plaintext list of all the passwords. If you want to find out if there even is one, then download the source code for hyperion and look for yourself.

What it does suggest is that someone /nick'ed to NickServ and consequently could see all the passwords of people joining then they were /msd'ed.

Trust No One

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

"A trusted component is one which can break the security policy."

A truely secure system should have no trusted components. A Client's faith should never be placed in anyone expect themselves, and even then, only reluctantly. Freenode had a trusted component; namely, Robert Levin's privilages. This should never have been present in the system and was simlpy a disaster waiting to happen.

If you really want security you've got to accept three things. Trust No One. The Enemy Knows the System. The System Can Be Broken. If you think otherwise, you haven't got security, you've just got a fancy codec.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

If this had happened to a Microsoft Server the comments would be off the wall about how this PROVES BEYOND DOUBT THAT WINDOWS REALLY SUCKS. (Bold characters intended to fool moderation drones). The hypocrisy on Slashdot is incredible.

Uh oh.

[SwartKrans]

Oh no! Someone stole my Freenode password! Now they can login and have no control over anything!

My thoughts..

[paulmer2003]

People should not use /msg nickserv pass on connect. They should be using scripts that check that nickserv is on a certain server (services.int, services.* etc etc) and its hostname matches.The IRC server should also have *serv juped/qlined so nobody can set their nick to *serv.

Of course, if someone was able to nab lilo's password, every user password may have been ripe for the taking.

What im wondering is, WHY THE FUCK ISNT HIS O:LINE IP RESTRICTED? Did he use one password for both the ircd ssh and his operline (if they were the same hacker could add himself a oline or add his ip to his oline..)? Either way, hes a moron.

The details are still unknown, but these events raise scary questions about the actual security of FreeNode and other organizations like it."

Not really. If he had his shit setup correctly this would have never happened in the first place.

Re:My thoughts..

[nenolod]

Hi! I used to be freenode staff, and I figured I would comment on this.

You obviously have no idea how freenode's infrastructure is managed -- the infrastucture isn't a land of ZOMG I BOUGHT SHELLZ FROM SHELLFX.NET garbage. Most of these servers exist solely to host freenode, do not use ssh passwords (instead private keys are used), and do not use the same passwords as lilo's o:line password.

The fact is that they rooted servers close to freenode servers (i.e., on the same switch); then used ettercap to sniff o:line passwords. This was exacerbated by the fact that o:lines are (NOT masked *@*, but masked ?=levin@*), so basically all that had to be done was use the username levin, and boom you're opered up.

That is what the issue is, the o:lines are insecure masked. Nothing more.

HOWEVER, since they were sniffing, it is possible that they may have lifted services passwords as well -- people should probably change them. Then again, how do you know that they still aren't sniffing. Quite simply, nobody except the people behind this know.

Also, the group freenode is dealing with is known as Bantown, which has a reputation of causing whatever hell they wish wherever they feel like doing so. So no, none of what you said is truly relevant, as this group is a tad more unpleasant than the GNAA is. Infact the GNAA is a bunch of nice guys in comparison to Bantown.

challenge authentication

[Spy der Mann]

If nickserv used some kind of challenge authentication (it sends you a random challenge, and you hash the password with it), we wouldn't have these problems. Of course, this is irc, and that might be somwehat difficult to implement.

It goes to lilo

[a16]

The money goes 100% to Lilo. *All* of their servers and hardware are donated. I believe they may pay for their web server, but even then, that's $99/month max?

This is what annoys me most about Lilo's "donation" pledges - he has set up a non-profit organisation with himself as the only paid employee, and receives thousands in donations yearly which all go to him. Oh, and "supplies", which of course are used by the only employee of the organisation. Yet he doesn't make this clear, at all. I believe most people genuinely think they are donating to the network, not the guy who sits there all day running it.

Lets also not forget his latest project, for us to all pay off his debt and buy him a new trailer to live in. Seriously, I'm not joking.

Freenode really, really needs new leadership, fast. Something not controlled by one person, or even if it is, someone competent would be a nice change :)

Re:It goes to lilo

[BoldAndBusted]

On some points, you are probably correct, but on the last one, on "Spinhome", what's the big deal? It's not like he says that the money is going to support the network and then turns around and spends it on his land yacht. That site makes it pretty clear what the money will go towards.

And, do you think that Freenode would run as well as it does (today excepted) without some guy "who sits there all day running it"? Oh, people don't deserve money, but, yesyesyes buymoreservers/bandwidth? He's being paid for the service he provides. And so far, that's been a decent service.

Wow, he recieves thousands in donations yearly. Literally *thousands*. Why, he could be... a Thousandaire! What a mogul.

I swear it was him!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Peer
Unfortunately he's still at large.

Re:Bull

[Lord Ender]

Well, in college, I did build a CPU (on paper) at the gate level. But my point is only that a person who is highly aware of every major component of his system is going to be able to wield it more effectively than a person who does not. Building (and selecting components) makes a person more aware of the machine's capabilities and more capable of fixing failures and bottlenecks.

And I don't mean to say it is OK for a kid to do this. I was answering the question "why are you a jackass?" That's why. It's not malice.