The most common variety of channel takeover uses disconnections caused by a netsplit; this is called riding the split. After such mass disconnections, a channel may be left without users, allowing the first rejoining user to recreate the channel and gain operator status. When the servers merge, any pre-existing operators retain their status, allowing the new user to kick out the original operators and take over the channel.
A simple prevention mechanism involves timestamping (abbreviated to TS), or checking the creation dates of the channels being merged. This was first implemented by Undernet (ircu) and is now common in many IRC servers. If both channels were created at the same time, all user statuses are retained when the two are combined; if one is newer than the other, special statuses are removed from those in the newer channel.
Additionally, a newer protection involving timestamping is used when a server splits away from the main network (when it no longer detects that IRC services are available), it disallows anyone creating a channel to be given operator privileges.
Read more about this topic: Internet Relay Chat Takeover
Famous quotes containing the words riding the, riding and/or split:
“Holland is a dream, Monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke—smokier by day, more gilded by night. And night and day that dream is peopled with Lohengrins like these, dreamily riding their black bicycles with high handle-bars, funereal swans constantly drifting throughout the whole country, around the seas, along the canals.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There can be no literary equivalent to truth.”
—Laura Riding (1901–1991)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)