If anyone is in a position to assist... 2600 IRC SERVER OFFLINE INDEFINITELY Posted 18 Jun 2002 07:13:36 UTC As a result of a massive Denial of Service attack of biblical proportions, we no longer have a home for irc.2600.net. It's rather ironic that hackers are constantly blamed for DoS attacks when they, like many Internet users, are often the victims. We have, for the moment anyway, lost a major forum of communications for the hacker community. It doesn't much matter if this was orchestrated by a bored individual or some sort of government conspiracy - the result is the same. Voices are silenced, communication becomes all the harder, any semblance of community is wiped away. There are those who will view the dismantling of our network as a good thing and it's those people whose interests were served by these attacks - attacks which required no computer skills and had nothing at all to do with hacking. The attacks came over the weekend, around the same time other such attacks were directed at sites like Fox News. They, however, got their connection back and launched a federal investigation. We would have preferred to simply find a technical solution but we weren't given that chance as our provider chose to simply disconnect us instead. Our system was kept afloat entirely through volunteer efforts and the fact of the matter is that we have more pressing things to worry about right now. Whether the IRC network ever comes back is now entirely up to the hacker community's ability to design a network that can work around the efforts of those trying to shut us down. If you want to help, please email irc@2600.com. We're sorry that the net continues to be shaped by malicious morons intent on shutting down all aspects of free speech. http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=1203 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com