Question re: security in chat rooms

Miguel_Sanchez

Now this may be a stupid question - if so just feel free to tell me (not that anyone on these boards ever needs permission)

If you're chatting in a standard chatroom such as Yahoo or the like - can someone run a trace on you and see where you're coming from and then attempt to hack into your computer?

Now I know muppets threaten this all the time when they get into a flame war in a chat room. But can it actually be done?

---

I'm the Dude

Kali

while i don't know what information a yahoo chat session reveals the short answer is always "yes they can" if they can get your ip.

but I think you'll get a more informed answer in the Security boards.. so I've copied this there.

hacktavist

Depends on what you mean by hack.
But really they cant do much dammage to a pc running 98 unless you have
a. drives shared or
b. are running win nt or linux and a couple of daemons

Victor

In MIRC you can simply use '/whois xxxx' to tell you this.

Given recent rumblings on the CS board (lots of people got hacked), set DCC Accept to off and accept things only from those people you actually know and trust.

'/who 194.*.*.*' will give you everyone using an iol IP on that irc server.

---

Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

Hobbes

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Victor:
In MIRC you can simply use '/whois xxxx' to tell you this.
</font>

Depends on the server. Some servers will mirror your IP back at you (to stop people doing what you suggest). Always funny to watch some muppet DoS themselves off.