I used to use the xeucc.tcl, but that script no longer works and hasn’t been updated since 2008.

> !ucc 9 usd gbp
<Bot> Could not obtain results from XE.com, sorry!

Further more xeucc.tcl uses the XE.com website to gather the information, however they don’t like us doing this, and have since added the following message:

WARNING: Automated extraction of rates is prohibited under the Terms of Use.

Other scripts such as Incith’s Exchange also use a website. This one uses Yahoo Finance. The problem is that this website is subject to change at any time without prior notice.

Parsing a website that is subject to change is not always a good idea. Instead what is needed is an API which is easy to parse and extract the data and also unlikely to change formatting.

Although XE.com does have an API, it is not free. This is no good.

I have decided instead to use the Yahoo Developer Network Currency Converter API, which is much easier to parse and permits this kind of usage.

There is a choice of two URLs which you can call to get the data:

http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?e=.csv&f=sl1d1t1&s=USDGBP=X

http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/?f=sl1d1t1&s=USDGBP=X

Both examples should provide you with a csv file to download which will contain the currency information.

I have used the second URL in my script.

Usage

> .ucc
<Bot> Usage: .ucc <amount> <from> <to>
> .ucc 9 usd gbp
<Bot> HM2K, * UCC: 9 USD is 5.8905 GBP as of 2/25/2010 9:22am

Download

• Download ucc.tcl

If you like it, or even if you don’t, please leave a comment below. Thanks.

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> .tz london
<Bot> HM2K, The time for the london timezone is Fri Feb 13 23:31:30 2009

However, much like my old weather.tcl, I realised that my worldtime.tcl had passed it’s sell by date and had now expired.

My old worldtime.tcl which was based on a script by Murf which used worldtimeserver.com to gather it’s data had stopped working.

It would seem that worldtimeserver.com had changed their markup which meant that it was no longer possible to parse the correct data from the HTML.

Never mind, I thought, there must be a better way, that doesn’t need to use a third party website, that won’t stop working.

After all operating systems have worldtime build in without using a website, so how do they do it?

So, I did some investigation…

I discovered that on Linux based systems (including FreeBSD) the time zone information was stored locally.

/usr/share/zoneinfo/

Using a bit of Google magic, I managed to locate a few pre-made procedures to help me read the time zone information.

• load-timezones.tcl
  • get_tz_names
  • get_tz_rules

Using these functions I was able to find the right timezone and get the GMT offset which allowed me to work out the time in that timezone using the unix ticks.

At the moment, because it reads the time zone files that are only available on Linux based systems, it will not work on windrops.

However, what I may do next time is build a function that saves the timezone information into a database file which can be used on windows systems and will also give the Linux systems a cache file to make it respond quicker.

Update: I decided to stop using the tz database method and replace it with a Google lookup method, which is far more accurate and portable.

So now you’ll probably want to download it…

• Download worldtime.tcl

Hope it works for you.

Enjoy!

Note: If you find this useful, or have an issue with the script, please add a comment below. Thanks.

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<daILLeST> anyine know of a weather tcl that actually works? All the ones I find are outdated, or in another language…

I decided it was time that I updated my old weather.tcl based on a script by Ycarus for eggdrop bots.

Before, many scripts used weather underground (wunderground.com) to gather their feed.

I believe this is because there were many existing TCL based software that used this site to gather their data via telnet.

Telnet access to their server stopped working correctly, so scripts began using their http site to gather data. This too eventually stopped working as once they changed their site, the scripts could no longer parse the html for the data.

Enter Google.

Google has a weather API that they use for their “iGoogle“, which is very handy.

Although it appears to be undocumented by Google, working with the API is easy enough…

http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=london&hl=en

The query string contains a “weather” parameter, which is generally city or postcode and the “hl” parameter which is the language.

This will return an XML formatted result for the city of “London, England”.

We can then parse the data we want from this and return it accordingly.

So, put it all together, a bit of TCL care (get it?), and we’re done…

• Download weather.tcl

It works well, and returns a result similar to this:

> .wz london
<Bot> HM2K, * Weather: London, England: Mostly Cloudy, 8ºC Humidity: 87% Wind: W at 9 mph

Hope you find this useful.

What I may do next time…

Since Google’s Weather API is completely officially undocumented it’s worth noting that in future it may be wise to use Yahoo’s weather API, which is fully and officially documented.

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Ident is important on IRC as some servers do not allow you to connect unless you have an ident, while others do, you find yourself with a tide (~) prefix before your username. These are sometimes banned. For example:

HM2K!HM2K@ROFL.name

#This is an example of a real user with a real ident

baduser!~asdfg@123.123.123.123

#This is an example of a possible exploited system

Generally the ident server (such as oidentd) will return the user’s username as the ident when it is requested, however on my servers, I allow some of my users to spoof their ident.

This means they can change their ident to whatever they like, regardless of their username.

To do this, you need to create the $HOME/.oidentd.conf file, with the following content:

global { reply ‘$ident’}

#Note: Where $ident is, replace with the ident you want.

I know some users find this a bit difficult or confusing, so I created a script to do it for them.

• setident.sh – A script used to set your ident

It’s works fine using the sh unix shell on FreeBSD.

If you are on my shell servers, you should be able to take advantage of this using the “setident” command.

Enjoy!

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For me, it marks the end of an era. There are no more UK IRC servers on the EFnet IRC network.

Gone are those days that I remember back in 1998 when the IRC protocol was an important part of the internet for any ISP.

It seems that IRC for many people has been replaced by many other services such as Instant Messaging, Social Networks, Blogs and BitTorrent. Yet IRC is still here.

I have put the delink down to the fact that Demon can no longer justify the running costs of such a service in the current economic climate.

It’s a real sign of the times when Demon, one of the first commercial UK ISPs can no longer support a service it has been running for over 16 years.

Demon has become a household name through the sponsorship of the EFnet IRC server and has become a very reputable ISP because of it, especially to administrators.

Demon has not released any kind of announcement nor has it updated it’s site to reflect the change and as I am not a Demon customer they have refused to comment on the situation.

Is this the end for EFnet UK? or Is this the start of the end for EFnet?  I hope not…

I’ve decided to start making steps in the right direction and so I’ve setup a website and mailing list called EFnet UK.

If you would like to be part of EFnet UK, please join the EFnet UK mailing list.

EFnet needs a new sponsor for a UK IRC server and we need your help to get one. Maybe you can help.

Thanks.

Update 09/10/09: Multiplay is now sponsoring a new EFnet UK server. efnet.demon.co.uk is dead, long live efnet.multiplay.co.uk. Thanks goes to @JamesOff.

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The script my botnet uses written in tcl was originally created by unknownd, but has since stopped development.

I know that he stopped development because not only did I speak to him before he quit IRC, but all his sites are no longer available.

UnKnownD – unknownd@dialdown.the.switch.uten.net parted #serialz on October 3 2001 2:24:31pm

The script was originally called “harry.tcl“, but it had a few bugs, so I decided to fix them and call it lame.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic script, but what I had was pretty lame, as it was just a hacked up version of someone else’s script but I only used it for my own personal botnet, so it didn’t really matter.

However, I now realise that it is actually better than the original harry.tcl because of the bugs I have fixed and the tweaks I added.

A few people over the years have shown a little interest in my botnet script, so I think it’s about time that I released it.

So where do I get the goodies?

I’ve setup a project hosting on Google Code as “lamebotnet“.

There’s no “release” as such yet, but you can get the files you need here, you only need to really follow the instructions in the readme file.

Don’t forget to configure your “botnet” file, otherwise your bots won’t know where to connect.

I am aware that by releasing the script I may make myself more vulnerable to exploitation and people may point out issues or bugs I wasn’t aware of, but hey, I’m all for improvement and look forward to fixing them.

Of course, this is assuming there even are any issues, there may not be, I’ve run this since about 2001 and had no major issues yet, so my hopes are pretty high.

Enjoy!

PS. Think of your own naming scheme for your botnet, I’m already using the muppets!

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This repository is a collection of scripts and code i’ve written in various languages such as mIRC Script, Perl, PHP, TCL, AutoIT, JavaScript, Shell, VB Script and Batch.

You can find the project here.

You may browse the code here.

You can raise issues here.

At the moment there’s only mIRC scripts and PHP code, but I hope to eventually upload all my code here.

There are also no downloads, as I feel most people can comfortably browse the code or use SVN. Although I may add specific downloads on request.

Watch this space.

I hope you find this useful!

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I no longer need the features of psyBNC and decided that there must be a better way.

At first I started looking at other, more basic BNC software, but then worked out that they work in very much the same way as psyBNC in the fact that you have to first connect to it, then tell it where to connect to.

So I thought… What about a socks5 proxy?

My BNC currently runs on my FreeBSD server, which I use for my IRC activity as it has plenty of IPs and lots of Vhosts.

mIRC can connect to an IRC Server through a Socks4, Socks5, or Proxy firewall.

In mIRC the fields the Firewall/Proxy dialogue box are as follows: Firewall Support <None|Server|DCC|Both>; Protocol <Socks4|Socks5|Proxy>; Hostname; User ID; Password; Port.

Judging by this, what I need is some kind of Socks daemon/server that has the ability to allow for a username or user id and a password.

I had a look at using OpenSSH’s Socks compatible dynamic forwarding by doing the following:

ssh -D<port> user@hostname

However, I discovered that the hostname was required, and I could not connect to any host on demand as expected.

So I decided to look at FreshPorts for Socks software, there are a few options…

• 3proxy – russian software, not a fan of this, it lacks documentation and support
• csocks – i386 only, no good on x64 machines
• nylon – seems pretty neat, tested it out, it has no options for username/password auth
• p5-Socks – a perl module, not a daemon
• proxy-connect – lacks proper maintenance
• prtunnel – poor documentation, doesn’t appear to do the task I want
• socks5 – “NEC has a funky license for this software”
• ss5 – bingo!
• tsocks – “Allow non SOCKS aware applications to use SOCKS without modification” — not what I want.

ss5 appears to be what I am looking for…

cd /usr/ports/net/ss5/ && make install clean

Based on the ss5 manual page I decided to create a ss5.conf file, which looked like this:

set SS5_SOCKS_USER hm2k
set SS5_SOCKS_PORT 33333
set SS5_SOCKS_ADDR rofl.name
set SS5_PASSWORD_FILE ~/ss5/ss5.passwd
set SS5_CONFIG_FILE ~/ss5/ss5.conf
set SS5_LOG_FILE ~/ss5/ss5.log
auth 0.0.0.0/0 – u
permit u 0.0.0.0/0 – 0.0.0.0/0 – - – - -

Once I’d done this, I tried to run it. I found that I wasn’t able to specify a config file meaning I probably wasn’t able to run this under anything other than root.

One thing I didn’t understand is that the ss5 configuration documentation say one of the variables (which the manual says to put into the config file) allows you to specify a config file. Which does not make sense!

So I decided to take a different approach, and coded my own SOCKS5 Server Script in perl…

I call it Simple Socks Server for Perl (sss.pl).

I hope someone else finds my script useful, and with any luck user feedback will drive me to develop it further.

Enjoy!

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History:

Seen v1.1 – 20/05/08 Lastspoke can work from seen.log now too, added relay so can be used locally, redid input and output, reset your log file
Seen v1.03 – 09/06/06 now has lastspoke, other functions were fixed too.
Seen v1.02 – Cleaned up the script, added this file.
Seen v1.01 – Fixed a few bugs and added new features.
Seen v1.0 – Initial Public Release – Basic Code.

Download seen.mrc

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However, as you can see his article was all about using the irssi IRC client on Linux/Ubuntu.

I decided that some people may wish to know how to do it on Windows.

Here’s how…

There’s tuns of IRC clients out there for windows, you can even find IRC clients in your web browser, such as Chatzilla in Mozilla and Opera has one too, not only this but you can also get ported versions of Linux clients. Not only that, bug large IRC networks such as EFnet even have their own webchat.

We’re not going to use any of these, we’re going to use the most renowned IRC client in the world: mIRC.

What makes mIRC such a great client is it’s usability. You’ll learn this once you start to use it.

Installing mIRC is easy, just download mIRC, run the exe file and follow the simple on screen instructions.

Once installed you need to setup “logging”, so go to Tools > Options, then IRC > Logging.

From there you can setup logging to your preferences. If you need help understanding any of this, just hit F1 at any time, and look for the section on Logging.

Mine looks like this:

Now to connect to a channel, say #SEO on EFnet, with the nickname NOTHM2K, you can do the following:

/nick NOTHM2K | /server irc.efnet.net | /join #SEO

Once you join the channel the client should start logging straight away.

So what can you actually do with your logs? Well you can view them, search them or generate stats from them. Just like most things you archive.

You can view your logs by doing:

//run $mircdirlogs

Note: the double slash is important, it means execute rather than plain text

As you will be on the “EFnet” network, you will likely see a folder called “EFnet”, if you have setup your logging like me, you will find your daily timestamped logs in there. You can get to the folder quickly by doing:

//run $+($mircdirlogs,\,$network,\)

To open the current log of the channel you’re currently in you can do:

//run $window($active).logfile

Note: Please make sure you have associated .log files with a program otherwise you will get an error and the file will not open.

To search through a log file for a specific string of text you can download grep for windows or use findstr which comes with windows. From mIRC do:

//run cmd

When a command prompt opens from there you can use grep or findstr. We will be using findstr…

findstr /?

Note: This returns the help information

findstr /s /C:”hello HM2K” *.log

Note: This will search through all files that end in .log in the current dir and subdirectories for the string “hello HM2K”.

Or for those that prefer mIRC scripts, here’s findstr for mIRC…

alias findstr { ; v0.1 by HM2K (Updated: 23/05/08)
if (!$3) { echo -a Usage: /findstr <path> <file-match> <string-match> | halt }
var %win = @findstr
if (!$window(%win)) { window -e %win }
var %files = $findfile($1,$2,0)
var %i = 1
while (%i < %files) {
filter -fwn $findfile($1,$2,%i) %win $+(*,$3,*)
if ($filtered) { aline %win $findfile($1,$2,%i) }
inc %i
}
}

To generate stats you need third party software such as mIRCstats or pisg (recommended), however if you do use pisg, it might make sense to use the eggdrop or windrop (for windows) IRC bot to generate the logs instead.

There’s lots and lots of other neat tricks in mIRC for logging (take a look at $findfile) and beyond. I invite you to take a look at some of my mIRC scripts, which some of you may find useful.

PS. If you like mIRC, please register.

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