mIRC Exploit Updates

This page has been marked as Historical. Information posted here may be inaccurate and out of date. This information is kept for sentimental and/or historical reference purposes.

The current version of mIRC (6.34 as of AUG 2008) has no known exploits. You are encouraged to upgrade to this version if you haven't already.

Do not click on Britney.jpg

This is not a mIRC bug, but it is an exploit that affects users of Windows IRC clients. Do not click on any URL that ends in Britney.JPG! A worm (self-propagating virus) is going around that spams IRC channels with a URL of an alleged Britney Spears picture. Do not click on that URL, it contains an Internet Explorer / Windows Media Player exploit. For more info see this page (ext. link). In fact, in general you should never click on URLs that come up in unsolicited messages.

DCC Exploit Affecting 6.12

On Oct 20 2003, another exploit was identified which can crash even the recently released version 6.12. It only seems to affect people who minimize DCC get dialog windows (manually or by default), and then open those windows to get a file with an excessively long filename. You can't be crashed unless that sequence of events occurs. That manual step is required. If you auto-get the file, or don't get the file at all, nothing happens.

If and only if you think the above affects you, then here is a temporary fix which should be pasted in your "remotes" section (alt-r to access). It basically rejects any excessively long filename.

ctcp *:dcc send:*: if ($len($nopath($filename)) >= 225) { echo 4 -s $nick tried to crash you with an illegal dcc send of $nopath($filename) | halt }

or this shorter version without the warning message:

ctcp *:dcc send:*: if ($len($nopath($filename)) >= 225) halt

If you are not comfortable with modifying your remotes, you can just ignore all incoming DCC sends with the following, which is the same temporary fix as for the other bug described in the next section:

/ignore -wd *

You can undo the above command by /ignore -rwd * (note the r for remove).

DCC Exploit Affecting 6.0-6.11

Starting Oct 12, 2003, an exploit was used to crash many people's mIRC clients. All versions from 6.0 thru 6.11 were affected, version 6.12 was released Oct 13 to fix the problem. The exploit involves a DCC command which can be sent to any person or channel, no matter what your DCC options are. (DCC is used to trade files or for DCC chat.) Just download the new version to fix this problem.

Check the #Help topic for updates too. The information here was contributed by various helpers from many sources, working together in harmony without ego or drama, who knew. It is not an official message from the author of mIRC.