OK, I know this is somewhat of an issue for some, but bear with me..
After having some weird problems with mIRC, I went back through my logs to look for any tale-tell traces of activities which might explain the problem I was having. One of the things I often look for is when someone joins a channel I am on and does a CTCP VERSION check of me or the entire channel, which may be a prelude to an attack (often, they searching for clients with known bugs/exploits in specific mIRC versions.) While looking for that, this idea hit me..
First, I know mIRC won't suppress showing it's version, and I am going under the single assumption that Khaled wants to "advertise" mIRC--Which is perfectly reasonable. Others, especially those who write and distribute complete scripts, also want to "advertise" their scripts. And still others, like myself, are simply concerned with security (I know IRC is not well-known for being very secure; However, that should not be justification against users trying to protect themselves, nor justification to make it any *less* secure.)
What about a compromise? Could mIRC give users some (limited) ability to customize the VERSION reply? Something like give them a choice if they want to display the actual version number, or simply display that it's mIRC without the specific version? What about allowing something like "UberScript for mIRC," as long as at some point, "mIRC" is prominently displayed?
Again, going under the assumption stated above, all mIRC really needs to do is make sure mIRC is shown somewhere in the text, and if not, add it. I, for one, really don't mind mIRC promoting itself--In fact, my own script let's mIRC send it's version reply, followed by my own custom one that gives the mIRC website URL (something the default reply doesn't do, heh), along with the URL for my own site (I don't really package a complete mIRC script, I just have some code snippets showing how I've done some things.) However, I would much prefer not showing that "6.3" (or whatever), since many exploits and attacks look for those versions which have known bugs that can be exploited.
Of course, since the majority of IRC clients in use these days is mIRC anyhow, the only major reason I see for version checks anymore are either those curious which script someone uses, or to find buggy clients to exploit. Likewise, those same reasons seem to be the main reasons for those who take steps to suppress the default version reply. Allowing some limited customization of the version reply would eliminate those reasons..
Cas
