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Protecting Your Channel from Spambots

There is a new breed of spambot on the network at present which is proving very difficult for both IRC Operators and channel owners to combat. The bots are fairly easy to recognize, each one has a six character nick composed of random letters in lowercase and a six character Ident with characters 2 and 3 being numbers.

For example : adwkpq!lk25oj@usr123.some.isp.com

Although little used, chanserv features the ability to set akicks on nicks & idents matching a specific pattern. The IRCD also allows bans to be set against nicks matching specific patterns. This can be used to keep these bots out of your channels as follows :

Identify to a nick with at lease SOP access to the channel in question.

Issue the following commands :

/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??0???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??1???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??2???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??3???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??4???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??5???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??6???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??7???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??8???@*
/chanserv akick #channel add ??????!??9???@*

This will ban any user with a six character nick and a six character ident with a number as the third character from the channel. The bans are specific enough that very few innocent users should be affected.

You can also use channel mode +R (registered nicks only) to keep these bots out of your channel. Alternatively, if you have an eggdrop bot in your channel you can employ 'sticky bans' to prevent the bots joining in the first place. To do this, log into your bot with an access level of Master (for standard eggdrops, some may differ) and issue the following commands:

.+ban ??????!??0???@*
.+ban ??????!??1???@*
.+ban ??????!??2???@*
.+ban ??????!??3???@*
.+ban ??????!??4???@*
.+ban ??????!??5???@*
.+ban ??????!??6???@*
.+ban ??????!??7???@*
.+ban ??????!??8???@*
.+ban ??????!??9???@*

.stick ??????!??0???@*
.stick ??????!??1???@*
.stick ??????!??2???@*
.stick ??????!??3???@*
.stick ??????!??4???@*
.stick ??????!??5???@*
.stick ??????!??6???@*
.stick ??????!??7???@*
.stick ??????!??8???@*
.stick ??????!??9???@*