UKTerrorist

Renton: I'm Renton, clan leader of the Irish clan, Fade to Black (F2B) and inphinity is clan leader of Clan Veterans (VETS).

inph0r: We're just two people who try to enjoy playing Counter-Strike.

inph0r: Esoteric is a database core with plug-in modules. The basic modules are: A scanner that scans, logs and categorises wonids, aliases and IP addresses. An IRC bot is so that people can query wonids during games through the use of halfirc and a php driven webby.

Renton: The way it works is simple. It sends an rcon status to servers at a set interval (around 60 seconds or so) which returns information from the server, such as | Name - Wonid - Frags - IP etc | which is all filtered in by esoteric and added to the database which can be accessed via web page or on Quakenet IRC.

Renton: Rent-bot was created by myself, after I learned of the existence of Darbot. Darbot was written for use by the Blueyonder admins and it monitors their servers and has an extensive database (over 100,000 I believe) of wonids. The main problem I saw was that Darbot was VERY handy for the Blueyonder admins, the public couldn't use it. Rent-bot, which at first was designed to parse server logs and extract information, but getting hold of the logs became a pain. The remote rcon monitor was born. Rent-bot resided on Quakenet and people were able to scan ids.

Renton: The fundamental problem with rent-bot was that I never knew how big it would get and since it had built up a database of wonids (over 20,000) and mIRC has no in-built database interfacing functions, I had to store each individual wonid's information in a .ini file, not to mention the fact over 20,000 wonids has horrible effects on your Fat32 partition.

inph0r: Written in mirc script, need I say more? Renton first approached me looking for logs, then chasing for rcon passwords. After a long talk about rent-bot and how it was written, I finally convinced Renton that he should use a database.

Renton: Data what?

inph0r: Renton, determined to use mirc script we started out trying to make an mirc-script to mysql interface. Several weeks passed by, I got the flu on a weekend and I wrote esoteric, but not in mirc-script.

Renton: ...and that's the rent-bot legacy.

inph0r: Rent-bot: mirc-script, mirc, a stolen rcon.mrc
Scanner: perl/dbd/dbi
IRC Bot: eggdrop + tcl (botnet possibility)
Web: php/dhtml/F5 Key
Most of the modules will be written in perl due to the portability factor.
Esoteric was developed on linux, with the focus being on it finally being released open source and being ported to windows. The database backend is mysql. However development for the time being will be closed source, till we've reached an acceptable point.

inph0r: At the moment there are 20 servers.

Renton: < esoteric > [status] aliases: 45644 wonids: 26965 new wonids: 59 servers monitored: 20.

inph0r: We're aiming to grow esoteric mainly in the UK + Ireland for now, with expansion later on. The backend was written with distributed structure in mind, thus supporting multiple database backends, multiple, scanners, multiple bots/web sites with the emphasis being on making it nearly impossible to port back to mirc script.

inph0r: As above, the project is designed to be distributed so expansion should be as easy as firing up a new machine and copying some scripts across.

Renton: Currently, it's running off a PIII 600.

Renton: A distribution package may eventually be made for it. The hardware we have is sufficient for now, what we do need though, is add more servers to the list.

inph0r: We've also been approached by some chaps at some hosting companies who are interested in providing machines/connections to help us expand. Its good to see the community is still interested in helping itself.

Renton: Unless Valve change their rcon protocol again, like they did after version 1104, there shouldn't be a problem.

inph0r: Again, the modular design helps to overcome most version conflicts because its a case of recoding the hl rcon perl module for one which is compatible with the latest version of hl. If valve do change anything, we'll deal with it.

Renton: http://inph.net/esoteric/bugs/

inph0r: The scanner is complete and working 100%. The bot gets more features added every day and so does the web page.

Renton: Any bugs can be reported at the above url.

Renton: Rent-bot was created over a number of weeks, but I have a job and college to attend. Esoteric took, well, a few weeks.

inph0r: 3 hours for the initial model and 15 hrs of improvements/bug fixes :/ and 3 weeks to import rentbot’s database.

inph0r: There are so many possibilities, one of my personal aims is to try to re-create a more trusting cs community.

Renton: I'd like it to be at the stage, where no person can get away with cheating on a server, without someone scanning their id and finding them, and exposing them.

inph0r: More recently the UK cs community has fractured into smaller groups who trust each other but don’t really trust anyone else. Hopefully we'll be able to rekindle some of trust between those groups whilst still excluding the cheaters.

Renton: by way of "customisable" ban lists.

Renton: No, nothing. All we need to scan a server is the address, port and rcon. Its not as simple as just saying "I'll scan that server over there." We require rcon to scan a server because as previously stated, the bot sends an rcon status every 60 seconds or so.

inph0r: At the moment it's just rcon based. I've been looking into the possibility of using both a server side program as well as a plugin for halfd/admin_mod/metamod.

Renton: Well, the idea being, to set up a sort of link between the major GSP's, for example, Blueyonder regularly publish lists of cheaters caught by their anti-cheat measures.

inph0r: umm yeah this one is difficult..

Renton: This is kinda a bit far down the line

inph0r: because of the position the companies are in, but we aim to provide tools which make their lives easier.

inph0r: Not immediately.

Renton: No ideas have been discussed on that matter. Yet :)

inph0r: We're not aiming for a witch hunt but rather an information base. We will however provide the tools for server ops to utilise their anti-cheat software to a more effective end.

Renton: But again, that’s further down the line =]

inph0r: We don’t know how far we're going to take this. But it's definitely a possibility.

Renton: Well, We are limited by the amount of servers we have to scan. The more servers we have being scanned, the more alias' and wonid's we get in the database. So, we would ask anyone who is interested to get in touch, via IRC in #esoteric (quakenet) to either myself or inph0r.

Or alternatively by email: rento@eircom.net or inph@inph.net. Our website is http://inph.net/esoteric.

Renton: If anyone wants to see how rent-bot worked, and they have a knowledge of mIRC scripting, a fairly chopped up, messy version of it is here.