ZeroDaHero's Overview of Usenet and the Warez Groups Let me start by saying I am not an authority on Usenet or an expert on the subject but I think I have been around long enough to compile a Faq for new users. I am going to try and present this information in an organized manner and try to stay on the subject of posting to Usenet. I will probably update this every once and a while and anyone who has anything worth while to add is welcome to. USENET: What is it ? How it works. Usenet Newsgroups are the 2nd most popular feature of the Internet. E-Mail in number one. As of this writing there are over 20,000 groups. Newsgroups are basically message boards that use special software and the NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol to distribute messages to news servers on the Internet. If you are interested in the technical aspect of NNTP you can get the RFC (request for comment ) which is a document discussing the protocols and Policies of the Internet. They are published by the Internet Engineering Task Force There are over 1,000 RFC's covering the protocol suite. RFC 0977 is the one covering NNTP. RFC,s are available at http://ds.internic.net/ds/rfc-index.html http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/information/rfc Newsgroup articles get put into a pipeline and become part of the "news feed" then the newservers connect to one another at a regularlrly scheduled time and update their messages. When they are done, both systems should have copies of all the messages . The news is passed one connection at a time, but with T-1 and T-3 lines as the backbone it doesn't take usually more than a day for the messages to be spread around the world. Not all systems carry all the newsgroups . Its is up to the system adminstrator and is usually based on storage constraints, but some system adminstrators sad to say censor the newsgroups such as the Warez groups, under the guise of limited storage, which is pretty hard to prove ,but if it is proven that they censored the group, then they open themselves up to a lawsuit, because they are then responsible for the content of EVERYTHING that is on their system. Messages are kept on for a specified amount of time but this can also be affected by the number of posts. Thats why it is IMPORTANT that you post in a large number of lines, or you will bump other posts off the server. What Tools You Will Need: The first and most important thing you will need is an Internet Service Provider which you alreay have if your reading this, but I bring up this point because 1) You may not be happy with your provider 2) They may not carry all the Warez groups 3) Their newserver just plain sucks If thats the case you owe it to yourself to get another ISP. There are lists of Public Internet Access Providers. Here are a few places they can be found http://ds.internic.net/cgi-bin/tochmtl/provider/Ointro.pr http://www.umd.umich.edu/~clp/i-access.html http://www.phoenix.net/config/news.html http://www.primus.net/providers http://thelist.com or Check the following newsgroups: alt.internet.access.wanted alt.internet.services alt.online.services A note for new users. The provider you choose must provide you with a SLIP or PPP connection to get the most out of the Newsgroups, and for that fact the Internet. Most of the providers on the above lists do. So you don't have to worry. With one of the above type connections you get to choose the software you want to use, and you can do multiple tasks at the same time, like ftp to a site while you download headers for your newsgroups or ftp to a site while your on IRC to check that site some guy just gave you. The reason I bring this up is that one or two people might be reading this from AOL or Compuserve ( I intend to post this to a few of the Warez groups, and AOL and Compuserve both carry alt.binaries.games believe it or not). If you already have a provider you have another option whereby to get news if you are not happy with your providers news feed. There are a few providers popping up, that give you access to a news server for between $5 and $10 dollars. Two I know of are http://alt.net http://www.net-link.com Software Needed to Navigate Newsgroups: There are few basic tools you need to succesfully participate in the warez newsgroups. The first thing is a newsreader, a software application that lets you read and post messages to newsgroups .The premier newsreader and most used is Free Agent. It is available at http:www.forteinc.com/forte This is version 1.0 and is the free version. From time to time you will see version 99b or the newer one 99c posted to the warez groups. This is the registered version and is not much different from the free one Except for a spell checker for composing e-mail, and a few minor things . I recommend you get the FAQ ( Frequently Asked Questions ) for Free Agent which is available at http://www.webpress.net/forte/agent/csfaq.htm To set up Free Agent unzip the file in a directroy of your choice. If you don't have the Pkzip program from Pkware skip down to the Compression, Archivers and Zip software section to find out where to get Pkzip.After you unzip the file you can make an icon for Free Agent if you want. You must connect to your Internet provider and then start Free Agent. The first time you start Free Agent it will ask you for your NNTP server and your SMTP server .If you don't know this information you must obtain it from your provider. Its usually nntp.providername.com or news.providername.com for your news server and smtp.providername.com for your mail server. There are public new servers but they are a well kept secret because once they become well known they become to busy to be usefull and they usually shut down. Once you have done that Agent will go Online to retrieve the master list of newsgroups. Since there are over 20,000 groups at last count so this will take some time,especially if you have a slower modem. After you have the list you can choose to subscribe to the ones you are interested in and then download the headers for that particular group. I can't explain every to you so your best bet is to open agent and then open the help file and size it so you can have both windows open next to each other and go throught Agent step by step with the help file open. One of the most annoying things people do is to post questions that could be answered by reading the help file. The following is a list of the current warez groups alt.binaries.games alt.binaries.misc alt.binaries.pictures.leek alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.old alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.d discussion alt.warez.ibm-pc.apps alt.warez.ibm-pc.games alt.warez.ibm-pc.old alt.cracks alt.crackers Remember not all services carry all of them! Some more newsreaders and the places you can get them are listed below WinVN ftp.titan.ksc.nasa.gov ftp.ripem.msu.edu NewsXpress ftp.hk.super.net/pub/windows/wskutil/nx1063.zip http://www.albant.net/~ddoak/files/nxlob4-p.zip New Xpress Faq - http://www.malch.com/nxfaq.html A MUST on your list of stops should be Strouds Consumate Winsock Apps List There are newsreader,ftp,irc and telenet clients HTML editors, mail clients, graphics viewers. There are 16 bit and 32 bit versions. Windows 3.xx versions Win 95 versions, and even a few Win NT versions . CHECK IT OUT at: http://cwsapps.texas.net Also check out: Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software http://www.tucows.com:80/catalog.html FreeWare Winsock Apps http://sage.cc.purdue.edu/~xniu/winsock/ws-ftp.htm University of California at San Marcos Windows Shareware Archive http://coyote.csum.edu/cwis/winworld/winsock.html Anti-Virus Software: Anti -virus software is a must if you download files off the Internet. For that matter you should scan all files that you get that don't come shrink wrapped from the store. I recommend Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee Virus Scan. Get the registered versions. Take your time and READ all the directions so you can properlly protect your computer. You can run the programs as TSR's so your always protected. Make sure when you configure the options,that you configure the virus protection to protect your boot sector. Also always try to get what is called updates. These are usually put out by the manufacturer and are free. They update your virus software with any new virus signatures that have become known. If you need immediate protection you can get some shareware versions at: ftp.risc.ua.edu/pub/ibm-antivirus/fp-220.zip F Prot 2.20 ftp.mcafee.com/pub/antivirus/wsc-227e.zip ftp.sun3.mcafee.com/pub/virus McAfee ftp.thunderbyte.com/ftp/thunderbyte/software/tbav650/shareware/ Thunderbyte versions for Dos, Win, Win 95 A great source of virus specific software as well as virus scanning programs reside at: http://www.acs.oakland.edu/oak/SimTel/msdos/virus.html Compression,Archivers and Zip software: The next tools you will need if you don't already have them are programs that compress the files to save time and space transfering them and a program to encode and decode files .Files posted to newsgroups must be ASCII. The Programs that you run on your computer are binary and must be converted to ASCII,in order to be posted to a newsgroup. Free Agent takes care of this automatially, but if you choose to use a different newsreader you must get a program calles UUencode UUdecode which is available at: oak.oakland.edu/Simtel.Msdos/decode/uuexe540.zip Wincode ver 2.6 is a Windows Uuencode/Decoder which makes it easy to decode and encode files . Wincode can be found at: ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/pc/win3/utils/wincode You will need Pkzip to compress the files you wish to post. Pkzip is a Dos based compression utility The registered version is posted to the warez groups often and the shareware version is available at: oak.oakland.edu/Simtel/Msdos/zip/pkz204g.exe ftp.funet.fi/pub/msdos/packing/zip/ Winzip is a Windows shell that make it easy to use pkzip.Instead of having to shell out to Dos you can accomplish all tasks with Pkzip in Windows. Winzip 6.0 can be had at: ftp.winzip.com/winzip/w260wn16.exe ftp.cica.indiana.edu/pub/pc/win3/utils/winzip56 Arj is another compression/archiver that is used extensiely in the Warez groups. It is available at the following FTP site oak.oakland.edu/Simtel/msdos/archiver/arj241a.exe Winzip also supports arj files and arc and lzh. You have to get the actual programs though as Winzip is just a shell. It doesn't have any of the compression or archive software built in .Then you must set up Winzip so it will work with the programs you choose. This amounts to telling it where to find Pkzip or Arj ( path ex: C:\utilities\pkzip\pkzip.exe etc. Just READ the help file and you should have no problems. How do I post : I am going to use Free Agent as the example because it is the most popular. There are a few ways to post anomously. First you set up Agent with bogus information. Under Options choose Preferences then from the tabs on top choose user profile. Fill in your e-mail and full name with whatever you want just keep the e-mail address in the correct format ( someone@fake.com ).While you are on the Preferences dialog box choose Attachments then under Lines per message select 10000. Thats ten thousand, that should be okay for most servers . If you notice your posts are cut short or screwed up try lowering it to 7500 but no lower than 5000. Make sure its the server first before you go that low. You can look at other peoples posts and check the header information to see if they use the same provider that you do.If they can post in 10000 lines you should be able to also . In Free Agent choose Article than choose Show all Header Fields .This will let you see where the article came from and alot of other info. Another way to post anomously is to use an anonomous remailer. This is where you send your posts to a remailer and they strip the header information and then resend the post or e-mail. The only person that knows who you are is the operator of the remailer. Recently the remailer at Penet in Finland was compromised when the local police retrieved the name of one of the remailers users.The system owner and administrator Johan Helsingius made the decision to give the police the one name they wanted instead of having his whole computer seized. The point being that nothing is 100 percent safe, but some things are a little safer. Also most remailers limit the size of posts you can make so this option must be explored fully before you decide to go this route. If you want send mail to help@anon.penet.fi and you will be allocated an anonomous address and you will be sent instructions.If you want more info on remailers try http://electron.rutgers.edu/~gambino/anon_server/anon.html http://www.stack.urc.tue.nl/~galactus/remailers or these newsgroups alt.cyberpunk alt.privacy If you do a search with the Webcrawler or Yahoo or any of the other search engines you will come up with much more info about remailers. The last way to post anonomously is to set up an account with a provider with fradulent credit info. I DO NOT recommend this only mention it as a point of interest. The credit card info must be a valid card number as most providers check this info while you are online and only after verfiying it will they issue you a password etc. This account usually doesnt last more than a week maybe a month unless the unsuspecting card holder pays his bill without looking at the charge descriptions. Before doing this I recommend getting a device from Radio Shack that blocks the caller ID information from being transmited from your phone line. As far as I know they don't check your phone number but it is a possability for the future. Better safe than caught. The only thing you have to do if you use this device is to change your modem initilization string. Usually you can change the X2 or X4 to X3s,but you may have to add some commas before the number to get a few seconds of pause before the number is dialed. This particular device makes a disticntive tone before the phone goes off hook This method gives the dialing software a slight pause so it doesn't interfere with the caller id's block tone. Rules of Da Road Posting is a pretty simple matter if you just lurk for a while and READ any help files that come with the software you use. I know its tempting to just open her up and get started but if you take your time and pay attention to detail it will be a much more enjoyable experience. These " rules " are not written in stone,in fact they ain't written anywhere .They are what has come to be known as Net Etiquette. Yes even us Warez traders must sit up straight at the table if we want to be served. First, when you post, your Header should not be longer than 50 characters or people can't read the thing. You should also try to follow the commonly used format when creating headers ATTN addressed to someone in particular RE regarding, usually a followup reply REQ a request for something REPOST another post of the same thing When you post as I mentioned earlier you need to post in a large number of lines per message. This is due to the fact that posting in many different parts takes up more space on the servers where the files are stored and also wastes bandwith due to the nature of the internet. There are many different layers of protocols used to transfer your posts, with each layer adding information to the packet. More parts lead to more packets well you get the idea. Posting many parts also lends itself to some of those parts getting lost or misdirected etc. Another problem that I see quite often is when someone tries to post a multiple disk program, in one big file instead of posting it by individual disks. The problem with posting it all in one zip, is that more often then not the server times out, and you have to repost the WHOLE thing. If you had posted it in individual disks, you could simply pick up where you left off. You may see from time to time that some people have a strang entry at the bottom of their signatures. Something called a Pgp key or Finger Print. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy .It is as public key crytography program that was developed by Phil Zimmerman. With PGP you can encrypt the files on your computer,encrypt your e-mail and sign your e-mail with a digital signature which is tamper proof. PGP runs on many operating systems such as DOS Windows about a dozen flavors of unix Macintosh and Amiga. PGP is free and is available in the U.S.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have a ftp server and a web page which to get it from. The current version is 2.6.2 ftp.net-dist.mit.edu http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp-form.html The process is a little involved but this is to make sure you are a U.S. citizen. The ftp server is not accesable from outside of the U.S. If you intend to seriously use PGP, do yourself a favor and get yourself a book. I recommend " PGP " by Simon Garfinkel published by O'Reilly & Associates. Another source of PGP and some good crypto software is the Official Cypherpunk repository at the University of California at Berkeley ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/pgp The user qwerty@netcom.com has put together one of the best collections of crypto related stuff I have seen. The PGP Faq is here which gives you a list of other ftp sites to get PGP from. ftp.netcom.com/pub/qwerty The Electronic Frontier Foundation also distributes PGP at: ftp.eff.org/pub/Net_info/Tools/Crypto There are two other ways to get warez that I am just going to mention in passing. The first is FTP ( File Transfer Protocol ) This is where you use FTP to download and upload files to a host machine. The addresses of these sites are usually traded for one another or some special request. Some of these sites can have really good programs The Cons of FTP are the posts are usually always complete . The bad news is that they aren't to easy to come by. The best shareware FTP programs are Cute FTP ,WS_ftp and it cousin Showarez which is WS_Ftp modified to show hidden directories. The second way to get warez is through IRC or Internet Relay Chat. This is a program that lets you have a conversation in real time with dozens of people at the same time. IRC has an option wherby you can DCC binary files directly to another person on the same IRC server you are on. My personal preference is the binaries news groups. They may be the most troublesome out of the three to get stuff, but you don't have to beg and trade with people to get anything. The major contributors to the warez groups post stuff without asking for anything in return. Compared to the IRC scene where I hate to say ,but you don't get nothin for nothin there. Sometimes you even get nothin for something. There are assholes that give you bullshit sites or you give them a site and then they disconnect. I am not painting all IRC users with the same brush but these are the things you have to put up with if you use IRC, unless you deal with regulars all the time. FTP sites are great but again, alot of sites are bullshit and they usually don't last long. People on the warez news groups are the BEST. Tips and Tricks Sometimes you may have trouble with your news reader connecting to your Domain Name Server. This is a database of Internet addresses on your providers computer. It resolves the host name to its numerical equivelant. This numerical address is sometimes refered to as a dotted quad. The idea is if you have the numerical Internet address of your news server you cut out the process of resolving the host name. This way, if there is ever trouble with your hosts Domain Name Server you can use the numerical equivelant and bypass this problem. There is a great program called Windows Socket Host that runs under many TCP/IP stacks that are Winsock compliant. You can find this program at: http://coyote.csusm.com/cwin/winworld/winsock.html ftp.csum.edu/pub/winworld/winsock/wshost11.zip Have you noticed sometimes that when you unzip a file that a logo or message is displayed. This is done with one of the undocumented switches in Pkzip. You must make up a file to be displayed and put it in the directory where the files you intend to zip are. The format is as follows pkzip -z filename.zip *.*