85036 - irc: Need more channel operators on #mozilla

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(mozilla.org :: Miscellaneous, task, P5)

Description

[James Green]

So for the umpteenth time we're bring flooded in #mozilla and for the umpteenth
time all the operators are American and sleeping. This sucks.

On the rare occassion non-Americans are given ops, they are few and far between.

There are a number of fully-capable IRC-savvy people such as myself who are
regularly in #mozilla and others, and are not in the US... Quite why the
existing op crew are unwilling to expand the management team is unknown.

We need to increase European and Asian ops for better coverage.

Comment 1

[James Green]

Still being mass-flooded, still no ops alive :(

Asa: please arrange more ops or something.

Comment 2

[Håkan Waara]

I fully agree! This is in fact a major problem. Yesterday we got this flooder,
who flooded for hours - and no ops were around!

At least 3 european ops is a start...

Comment 3

[Håkan Waara]

This is an example of how it can look pre-american morning:

@alecf - away for 58 hours
@botbot - he's a bot!
@endico - away for 58 hours
@Hixie - sleep
@kerzOut, kerzzz - asleep and away
@msw - away

That's how vulnerable we are on this time of the day.

Comment 4

[Stuart Parmenter]

You might convince me that we need more channel operators in #mozilla, but 
you're going to have a hard time convincing me that we need more irc 
server operators.

Comment 5

[James Green]

I suggest adding doron, hwaara, myself, and possibly others such as bz and
fabian to the ops list in both #mozilla and #mozillazine, both of which are
often DoS targets. There's no rule about having too many ops, it's having too
little that's the problem.

Comment 6

[timeless]

from that list only @endico and @msw have an o:line.

there are really two questions, do we want more channel ops and do we need more 
irc ops.  the suggestions and comments are about channel ops, which makes 
pavlov a bad assignee. but the problem of flooding is probably best solved at a 
server level.

Comment 7

[James Green]

The problem of flooding is one that a number of IRC networks have to deal with,
and none has come up with a solution otherwise we'd all have implemented it by
now. The best known way of dealing with flooding so far is to have a bot set the
channel limit to (number of current users + x) where x is some smallish step
such as ten, and to re-set the channel limit every y number of minutes, such as
five. This does not prevent the flooding entirely, and only affects channel
joins, but it does prove effective enough to implement. However, that is another
issue.

I agree that this bug is about channel ops. I am keeping away from IRC ops
(okay, bad Summary) because that requires much more technical knowledge and
responsibility, something I can't see Netscape giving out to people all that easily.

More channel operators will improve the situation without a doubt. Simply
setting mode +i at the start of an attack and kick/banning the offenders has
proven somewhat effective in the past, at least until they give up. No
currently-available solution meets all our needs, but with the channel ops as
they are now quite often sleeping in the States during an attack, it can't get
much worse.

I guess to answer timeless's comments directly, more of both are needed, but at
least we can solve the channel ops issue quickly and simply, and have an almost
equal effectiveness.

Comment 8

[Axel Hecht]

I'm personally not a friend of a massive numbers of channel ops, but there
should be a good way to get ops. I have been blessed user of oopsbot, back in
the days. That sounded like a good solution. In general you're a normal user,
but in case it's needed, you can get ops.
I see quite some downtime on mozbot, and it's not always op'd. Is botbot 
current?
Is there a way for the server to op a bot automatically? Is that a bad thing?
(me wonders about all kind of spoof attacks et al). Probably.

Axel

Comment 9

[James Green]

AFAIK there are three types of channel:

1.  Those with a minimal number of operators permanently installed (see #debian
    on irc.openprojects,net), normally these ops are bots that can deal with
    various situations. When human intervention is needed, they get themselves
    opped from either the bot or from services such as chanserv.
2.  Those with a small number of ops, maybe 5-15% of the users  in the channel.
    Normally works ok, unless most of the ops live in the same timezone :-)
3.  Those with a higher number of ops, who are spread out around the world. You
    don't normally see trouble in these channels.

We don't have services, but I do know that pavlov can get opped in any channel
at any time. As you say, this is probably a security risk somewhere along the
line depending on how it is implemented.

Botbot is usually around, I believe. At least, I don't often see times when it's
not. Of course, if everyone's op status is dependant on botbot we obviously have
a weakest link, but hey. I don't see services being installed any time soon, but
if botbot could be (re)started easily and given ops by the irc server in each
channel it joins, then it can op others, and the problem is mostly solved.

Let's cc hixie, who can at least get people into botbot's database.

Comment 10

[timeless]

fwiw pavlov can't be opped in any channel, and has implied he can't use his 
o:line from anywhere (which is probably a good thing) -- although i'd expect it 
to work using sera.

the recent attacks were carried out by someone exploiting open socks proxies.  
ircu can scan for open wingate proxies and kline those sites, however afaik 
ircu doesn't yet handle open socks proxies.

getting botbot to be opped by the server is pretty easy however those changes 
require a restart.

Comment 11

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

The real solution for this bug is for me and Pavlov or Dawn to sit down for a 
couple of hours and install oopsbot. (Me to install it, Pavlov or Dawn to look
over my shoulder while I play around as root.)

Once that is done, there will once again be plenty of ops in #mozilla.

In the case of #mozillazine, it is something for kerz and other Mozillazine 
staff members to sort out.

Comment 12

[James Green]

Added dependency on getting oopsbot installed.

Hixie has given the argument that more ops (and ops who take action against
DoSers) actually encourages attacks. I don't disagree with his comments, but I
would say that to many people, the temporary disruption (and in fact, the
annoyance of no-ops being around) can be more frustrating than the attack
itself. Psychology and tactics all play their part.

I would also point out that we aren't only talking about mass DoS attacks -- on
occassion there are always lone clients who will start flooding the channel by
themselves, a much easier issue to deal with.

On a related point, it seems impossible to get a constructive answer to getting
people entered into botbot's database of ops in either #mozilla or #mozillazine.
Kerz is unwilling to play with botbot for #mozillazine, and no-one seems to know
the way of doing it for #mozilla. Sigh.

Comment 13

[Gagan]

blah

Comment 14

[Stuart Parmenter]

we seem to have good coverage these days.  marking fixed.