Wading into an Eggdrop soup

I found a directory called sitebot with a readme file that referred to the software in the directory as an Eggdrop. This was under the Windows directory on a PC that claimed to have zero free space on an almost empty hard drive. What's an Eggdrop?

The Web site www.eggheads.org says Eggdrop is the world's most popular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot.

According to www.egghelp.org, "An IRC bot is a program that sits in an IRC channel 24-7. It looks just like a normal user on the channel, but is usually idle until it's called on to perform a particular function."

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I found a directory called sitebot with a readme file that referred to the software in the directory as an Eggdrop. This was under the Windows directory on a PC that claimed to have zero free space on an almost empty hard drive. What's an Eggdrop?

The Web site www.eggheads.org says Eggdrop is the world's most popular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot.

According to www.egghelp.org, "An IRC bot is a program that sits in an IRC channel 24-7. It looks just like a normal user on the channel, but is usually idle until it's called on to perform a particular function."

There are legitimate uses for IRC bots, but it sounds like you have been unknowingly hosting a file distribution site. The virtual file system used by some Eggdrop bots hides files from Windows directory listings, while the disk properties dialog usually will show a true picture of the space left on the disk.

You might be able to see the files by booting into Linux from diskette. One source for a useful Linux boot diskette can be accessed here.

It might be difficult to manually remove all Eggdrop components from your system. Find the network vulnerability through which the software was installed on the PC and keep up with all security patches.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.