5.4 KiB
Internet Relay Chat Probe (IRCP)
A robust information gathering tool for large scale reconnaissance on Internet Relay Chat servers, made for future usage with internetrelaychat.org for public statistics on the protocol.
Meant to be used in combination with masscan checking 0.0.0.0/0 (the entire IPv4 range) for port 6667.
The idea is to create a proof-of-concept documenting how large-scale information gathering on the IRC protocol can be malicious & invasive to privacy.
Order of Operations
First, an attempt to connect using SSL/TLS on port 6697 is made, which if it fails, will fall back to a standard connection on port 6667.
Once connected, server information is gathered from ADMIN, CAP LS, MODULES -all, VERSION, IRCOPS, MAP, INFO, LINKS, STATS p, & LIST replies.
An attempt to register a nickname is then made by trying to contact NickServ.
Next, every channel is joined with a WHO command sent & every new nick found gets a WHOIS.
Everything is done in a carefully throttled manner for stealth to avoid detection. An extensive amount research on IRC daemons, services, & common practices used by network administrators was done & has fine tuned this project to be able to evade common triggers that thwart (finally got to use this word) what we are doing.
Opt-out
The IRC networks we scanned are PUBLIC networks...any person can freely connect & parse the same information. Send your hate mail to scan@internetrelaychat.org
Config
Settings
| Setting | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
color |
True |
Show colors in console output |
errors |
True |
Show errors in console |
errors_conn |
False |
Show connection errors in console |
log_max |
5000000 |
Maximum log size (in bytes) before starting another |
nickname |
"IRCP" |
IRC nickname (None = random) |
username |
"ircp" |
IRC username (None = random) |
realname |
"internetrelaychat.org" |
IRC realname (None = random) |
ns_mail |
"scan@internetrelaychat.org" |
NickServ email address (None = random) |
ns_pass |
"changeme" |
NickServ password (None = random) |
vhost |
None |
Bind to a specific IP address |
Throttle
| Setting | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
channels |
3 |
Maximum number of channels to scan at once |
delay |
300 |
Delay before registering nick (if enabled) & sending LIST |
join |
10 |
Delay between channel JOIN |
nick |
300 |
Delay between every random NICK change |
part |
10 |
Delay before PART from channel |
seconds |
300 |
Maximum seconds to wait when throttled for JOIN |
threads |
100 |
Maximum number of threads running |
timeout |
30 |
Timeout for all sockets |
whois |
5 |
Delay between WHOIS requests |
ztimeout |
200 |
Timeout for zero data from server |
Preview
Threat Scope
While IRC is an unfavored chat protocol as of 2023 (roughly 7,000 networks), it still has a beating heart *(over 200,000 users & channels) with potential for user growth & active development being done on IRCv3 protocol implementations.
Point is..it's not going anywhere.
With that being said, the ability for anyone to be able to do what this project is intend to do, leads way for a lot of potential threats:
- A new RCE is found for a very common IRC bot
- A new 0day is found for a certain IRCd version
- Old IRC daemons running versions with known CVE's
- Tracing users network/channel whereabouts
- Mass spamming attacks on every network
Todo
- Built in identd
- Checking for IPv6 availability (SSL= in 005 responses may help verify IPv6)
- Support for IRC servers using old versions of SSL
- Create a seperate log for failed connections (Sync to file every hour maybe)
- Ability to link multiple IRCP instances running in daemon mode together for balancing
- Remote syncing the logs to another server