Recent from talks
Freenode
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Freenode
Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC computer network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname chat.freenode.net, which load balances connections by using round-robin DNS.
On 19 May 2021, Freenode underwent what some staff described as a "hostile takeover" and at least 14 volunteer staff members resigned. Following the events, various organisations using Freenode – including Arch Linux, CentOS, FreeBSD, the Free Software Foundation, Free Software Foundation Europe, Gentoo Linux, KDE, LineageOS, Slackware, Ubuntu, and the Wikimedia Foundation – moved their channels to Libera Chat, a network created by former Freenode staff. Others like Haiku or Alpine Linux moved to the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC). By 16 August 2021, over a thousand projects had left Freenode.[self-published source]
Freenode began as a four-person Linux support channel called #LinPeople on EFnet, another IRC network. By 1995, after moving to Undernet, and then to DALnet, it moved from being just a channel to its own network, irc.linpeople.org. In early 1998, it changed to Open Projects Net (OPN) with about 200 users and under 20 channels. OPN soon grew to become the largest network for the free software community, and 20th largest in the world.
In 2002, the name changed to Freenode. The OPN domains were later put up for sale, but did not sell.
In 2002 the Peer-Directed Projects Center (PDPC) was founded to support Freenode. PDPC was incorporated in Texas and the IRS recognised it as a 501(c)(3) charity from 2002 until approximately 2010, during which it received support from such organizations as the Linux Fund in 2007.
On 24 June 2006, a user with the nickname ratbert gained the administrative privileges of Freenode administrator Rob Levin (lilo) and took control of the network. It is likely that approximately 25 user passwords were stolen as a result. This user proceeded to K-line many Freenode staff members, and most Freenode servers subsequently went down for several hours.
Around 30 January 2010, an internet troll organization, Gay Nigger Association of America, took an established exploit in HTML form and HTTP POST implementation (previously used in attacks on email protocols, e.g. POP3 and SMTP) and applied it to the IRC protocol to create a novel type of attack on Freenode, which had never been seen before in the wild. The organization created a piece of JavaScript that caused users of Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox and SeaMonkey to silently connect to Freenode and flood it. This exploit used an ability of Firefox to submit web forms to a port other than 80 (the default HTTP port). Whilst Firefox developers had blocked most ports some time ago, port 6667, the port typically used for IRC, was not blocked. The group used Encyclopedia Dramatica (a user-modifiable wiki, like Wikipedia) as a distribution vector, with the flooded messages directing users to click on a link to the modified Encyclopedia Dramatica page, causing those users to also become involved and resulting in a cascading snowball effect. Weev, one of the group members responsible, later claimed that the attack had rendered the network "unusable [...] for days" due to what he perceived as incompetence among Freenode's staff at the time. He stated that the organization had also tried the same attack on other networks but had been shut down far more rapidly.
On 2 February 2014, Freenode suffered a DDoS attack (confirmed by @freenodestaff on Twitter) which caused a partial outage.
Hub AI
Freenode AI simulator
(@Freenode_simulator)
Freenode
Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC computer network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname chat.freenode.net, which load balances connections by using round-robin DNS.
On 19 May 2021, Freenode underwent what some staff described as a "hostile takeover" and at least 14 volunteer staff members resigned. Following the events, various organisations using Freenode – including Arch Linux, CentOS, FreeBSD, the Free Software Foundation, Free Software Foundation Europe, Gentoo Linux, KDE, LineageOS, Slackware, Ubuntu, and the Wikimedia Foundation – moved their channels to Libera Chat, a network created by former Freenode staff. Others like Haiku or Alpine Linux moved to the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC). By 16 August 2021, over a thousand projects had left Freenode.[self-published source]
Freenode began as a four-person Linux support channel called #LinPeople on EFnet, another IRC network. By 1995, after moving to Undernet, and then to DALnet, it moved from being just a channel to its own network, irc.linpeople.org. In early 1998, it changed to Open Projects Net (OPN) with about 200 users and under 20 channels. OPN soon grew to become the largest network for the free software community, and 20th largest in the world.
In 2002, the name changed to Freenode. The OPN domains were later put up for sale, but did not sell.
In 2002 the Peer-Directed Projects Center (PDPC) was founded to support Freenode. PDPC was incorporated in Texas and the IRS recognised it as a 501(c)(3) charity from 2002 until approximately 2010, during which it received support from such organizations as the Linux Fund in 2007.
On 24 June 2006, a user with the nickname ratbert gained the administrative privileges of Freenode administrator Rob Levin (lilo) and took control of the network. It is likely that approximately 25 user passwords were stolen as a result. This user proceeded to K-line many Freenode staff members, and most Freenode servers subsequently went down for several hours.
Around 30 January 2010, an internet troll organization, Gay Nigger Association of America, took an established exploit in HTML form and HTTP POST implementation (previously used in attacks on email protocols, e.g. POP3 and SMTP) and applied it to the IRC protocol to create a novel type of attack on Freenode, which had never been seen before in the wild. The organization created a piece of JavaScript that caused users of Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox and SeaMonkey to silently connect to Freenode and flood it. This exploit used an ability of Firefox to submit web forms to a port other than 80 (the default HTTP port). Whilst Firefox developers had blocked most ports some time ago, port 6667, the port typically used for IRC, was not blocked. The group used Encyclopedia Dramatica (a user-modifiable wiki, like Wikipedia) as a distribution vector, with the flooded messages directing users to click on a link to the modified Encyclopedia Dramatica page, causing those users to also become involved and resulting in a cascading snowball effect. Weev, one of the group members responsible, later claimed that the attack had rendered the network "unusable [...] for days" due to what he perceived as incompetence among Freenode's staff at the time. He stated that the organization had also tried the same attack on other networks but had been shut down far more rapidly.
On 2 February 2014, Freenode suffered a DDoS attack (confirmed by @freenodestaff on Twitter) which caused a partial outage.