Banning Abusive Mibbit Users

Mibbit is a service that permits users to utilize web browsers to connect to IRC. Mibbit functions by operating a series of termination servers (ircip#.mibbit.com) that operate as an intermediary between the user and the IRC service to provide a translation between the HTTP and IRC protocols. Due to this, users appear to be connecting from the termination servers and thus banning has to be handled a differently.

IRC user masks are in the form of <nick>!<ident>@<hostmask>. Most of the time channel, server, or network personnel normally would target the hostmask field alone, however with Mibbit, doing such would impact all users connecting through a termination server. To aid operations personnel, the Mibbit service transmits the IP address of the connecting user via the ident field encoded in hex.

So the best method to ban a mibbit user is whois the user, then implement a ban as such:

Commands

Channel Ban

/mode +b *!<ident>@*.mibbit.com

Kicking would then be performed as normal.

G/K-lining

/gline <ident>@*.mibbit.com 0 Reason text

or

/kline <ident>@*.mibbit.com 0 Reason text

Z-lining

Z-lines are not recommended as they would target all users since z-lines are IP-based.

Decoding the IP

Often times for accountability/abuse reasons, it can be useful to determine the IP address of a mibbit user.

Take the hex:

• cb007135

Separate each byte into quads:

• cb.00.71.35

Translate each quad to decimal:

• 203.0.113.53