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// HackTricks · Network Services

194,6667,6660-7000 - Pentesting IRC

194,6667,6660-7000 - Pentesting IRC

Basic Information

IRC is a text protocol. IANA assigns TCP 194 to IRC, while deployments have historically used TCP 6667 and adjacent unprivileged ports; modern networks also commonly offer TLS on 6697.[1][2]

Registration normally requires at least NICK and USER; a server may additionally require PASS, SASL, or other network-specific authentication. Reverse-DNS lookup is implementation/configuration dependent.[2]

Users are divided into operators, who need a username and password for more access, and regular users. Operators have varying levels of privileges, with administrators at the top.

Default ports: 194, 6667, 6660-7000

PORT     STATE SERVICE
6667/tcp open  irc

Enumeration

IRC can support TLS.

nc -vn <IP> <PORT>
openssl s_client -connect <IP>:<PORT> -quiet

Manual

The following raw session registers a random nickname and exercises useful enumeration commands. Command availability and permissions vary by daemon and network; the IRC command index provides additional commands to test where supported.[5]

#Connection with random nickname
USER ran213eqdw123 0 * ran213eqdw123
NICK ran213eqdw123
#If a PING :<random> is responded you need to send
#PONG :<received random>

VERSION
HELP
INFO
LINKS
HELPOP USERCMDS
HELPOP OPERCMDS
OPERATOR CAPA
ADMIN      #Admin info
USERS      #Current number of users
TIME       #Server's time
STATS a    #Only operators should be able to run this
NAMES      #List channel names and usernames inside of each channel -> Nombre del canal y nombre de las personas que estan dentro
LIST       #List channel names along with channel banner
WHOIS <USERNAME>      #WHOIS a username
USERHOST <USERNAME>   #If available, get hostname of a user
USERIP <USERNAME>     #If available, get ip of a user
JOIN <CHANNEL_NAME>   #Connect to a channel

#Operator creds Brute-Force
OPER <USERNAME> <PASSWORD>

You can also test server-password authentication when the service advertises or requires it. wealllikedebian appeared in an old Debian/ngIRCd sample configuration and is worth testing only when that specific legacy setup is identified; it is not a universal ngIRCd default.[3]

PASS wealllikedebian
NICK patrick
USER test1 test2 <IP> :test3

Find and scan IRC services

nmap -sV --script irc-botnet-channels,irc-info,irc-unrealircd-backdoor -p 194,6660-7000 <ip>

The NSE documentation describes the probes, output, and safety classification for these scripts.[4]

Brute Force

Shodan

  • looking up your hostname

References