Advice regarding ping/floods, etc....?

Hi..im new here, so greetings....anyways, I have some hopefully simple questions that can be addressed....
Location: on some local chatrooms, which uses IE or Netscape with a java applet, and allows users to join certain channels and chat either openly in those channels, or private with other users.

assumption: I believe the sites may implement Mirc, as most commands are the samei. Whois, etc.)

problem: Certain users have a tendency to FLOOD or ping flood other users in the room, and constantly harrass them...this is becoming a problem, and I was wondering if/how one can implement a way of protection against such floods/pings??... I've noticed alot of Mirc related ways to do this, but wasnt sure on how to go about doing this directly in this java applet. There unfortunately is no help from the sites directly, and no use in contacting the webmaster there.

any easy explannations on how to prevent such attacks would be greatly appreciated..thanks!

well, all the mIRC methods use mIRC's scripting(if i know what you are talking about, and i think i do) to help. they DONT fix it. what they do is to ignore people who flood text or not reply to ping commands ect ect. if the person does a pure ping flood on you there is nothing you can do to protect yourself. even if the person is using an irc-based ping command(ok it isnt IRC based, but whatever...you get the idea), you have no form of scripting available to you on a java client.

basically what i am saying is you dont really have anything you can do about it that i know of.

First you have to get one thing right: those sites and applets do not implement mirc, as that is just a programme, not a protocol - those sites implement the irc (the internet relay chat) protocol. Comparing mirc to irc is as comparing a car to a highway: the car uses the highway as mirc makes use of irc.

There is a lot of information available on the topic, but I suggest reading the rfc 1495. That describes the complete protocol.

The best place to battle the floods is at server-level: the server-admin can limit the amount of data that users can transmit within a certain amount of time. Another thing a server-admin can do is hide the actual IP of the users, such that an attacker cannot attack the victim directly. Furthermore, IRCops should ban malicious users from the network.

The second line of defence lies in the channel and the channel operators: following the rules of netiquette, they should kick and/or ban any malicious users that misuse the network.

Finally, you can limit the amount of data you which to recieve - many clients have anti-flood settings - look in the helpfile of your favourite irc-client.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Guus
Finally, you can limit the amount of data you which to recieve - many clients have anti-flood settings - look in the helpfile of your favourite irc-client.

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he said he was using a java aplet. these almost never(never that i've seen) implement any features such as anti-flood settings.

i think i should re-vise my answer above. my suggestion is that you go out and download a real IRC client and stop using the java interfaces :)

Thanks for the info everyone...yes, that is correct, the java client unfortunately has no settings implemented to stop floods. there also are no ops implemented, and the webmaster refuses to add any, so that leaves a dead end....however, one other quick question. The site can be reached by using MIRC...so, instead of connecting directly through the browser, mirc can be used to connect to the site, therefore, are there any easy methods when connecting this way to block such floods? (example: using mirc, u can connect to the addresss 167.55.555.5 at port 7000).... thanks again

If the admin is a dick, you're helplessly lost. Then again, if he doesn't anything to prevent the simplest forms of abuse, the network could be considered worthless anyway. Consider moving your channel to another server.

Heh, Guus' advice sums it up pretty well. Unfortunately, that's about all you can do.

Heres an easy way without using any Mirc Script. Get a Firewall, Tiny Provides a very good free one. www.tinysoftware.com . You can choose to block ICMP pings and and ICMP responses and alot of other stuff. Try it out.

...if they are going to ping flood you a fire-wall will do nothing. the only use of blocking icmp pings and responces and stuff is so your pc doesnt show up in ping-sweeps. no matter what, if the person has suffecient bandwidth, they can burry your connection with a ping flood...its called a DoS attack(and is quite often a DDoS on IRC networks, using many bots to flood you off the network)

I would reccomend getting the free personal protection firewall Zone Alarm from http://www.zonelabs.com.............. It is rated the best personal firewall and again ---- it's free. Easy to configure as well. My suggestion, stay away from Black Ice Defender. Also, if you don't want a personal firewall -----whether it's due to paranoia or what--------- simply use an anonymous private/public --- either will work----- proxy server. Configure your browser to run it on port 80. It's as simple as finding an anonymous proxy, checking it's speed and it's anonymity, and copying and pasting it into your browser properties. That simple. So, if you ARE using your browser as the IRC client and no other ports are being used for data transfer via server => you and vice versa, this will work. If someone dos try and pingflood you or run a DOS on you, they'll just be wasting their time as they will be hitting the proxies IP, not yours. Anyways, just a small suggestion for you --------- maybe it'll work out okay for you. :)