This item deals with a new kind of plague which has been currently spreading over the irc for more than one year: this is a proposal to become an op of a channel you are currently on. You must be aware that this proposal is not honest, and malicious; the best thing to do in this case is to simply ignore it.

Generally, you could receive a private message from the infected client at the first time you speak on a common channel. It depends: some variants wait for you to pronounce a sentence with a "a", or some specific letter.

A typical message is as follows:

<infected_client> Want to be an OPERATOR in #channel ? copy/paste this-> //write   $decode(b24gMTp0ZXh0Oio6Izp7IC5pZ25vcmUgJG5...ICQrIG1lICtSIH0=,m) | .load -rs   | //mode $me +R

You must know that, writing this code in any edit area of mirc causes a small file to be created in your mirc folder. This file is a small script; it contains all of the instructions so that the worm propagates from your irc client to another one, as well as some additional "malicious" instructions (like forcing you to join a specific channel).

To eradicate this worm, process as follows:

Firstly type the combination Alt-R. You should see a dialog box appearing. Then click in the View menu.



In this menu, pick (if not still selected) the empty field, after the digit (this is not really empty, but it contains a blank space, which is the actual name of the worm file).



You should see something like that:



Then go in the File menu, pick "Unload" and press the OK button. That's all folks!