[IRCServices] known services "abuse"?

[Andrew Church]

     Replying to two messages at once:

>Hey,
>lately I've noticed this error message coming up quite often:
>
>Global -- from services.mircx.com:
>Warning: unable to set modes on channel #rena. Are your servers' U:lines configured correctly?
>
>The channel is known to have script-kiddies in it and when I started
>investigating about that a bit I heard they found a way to "abuse" the
>servs, most likely Chanserv.

     I suspect what's happening is that someone is deliberately changing
channel modes against a modelock.  The U-line error detection code works
by checking the number of times a MODE message is received for a given
channel in a given period of time; if it exceeds a built-in limit (I
think it's three messages in one second), the code assumes that the
server is cancelling its mode changes and displays the U-line error
message.  The code does check that the mode sender has a period in their
nickname, though; does your server allow nicknames with periods in them?
If so, it's in violation of the RFC and should be fixed; if not, I'd be
interested in seeing a debug log of this problem happening.

>A problem I have had with relation to Operserv and Chanserv.
>Chanserv can op a user on a channel but OperServ can't op the same person.
>Operserv complains about ulines not being configured correctly.
[...]
>For whatever reason, it has now stopped giving this error. I can't help
>much as to why it started working all of a sudden, but the only thing that
>comes to mind is that the system was rebooted, though i doubt this is
>related. Restarting services or the ircd had no effect whatsoever.

     This can happen if at some time in the past Services determined that
mode setting didn't work (as above).  Actually, OP/DEOP shouldn't work
then either; that's a bug.  Restarting Services ought to fix it,
unless/until Services has a problem setting modes again.

  --Andrew Church
    achurch at dragonfire.net
    http://achurch.dragonfire.net/

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