BitchX
Template:Short description {{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters | check | showblankpositional=1 | unknown = Template:Main other | preview = Page using Template:Infobox software with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y | AsOf | author | background | bodystyle | caption | collapsetext | collapsible | developer | discontinued | engine | engines | genre | included with | language | language count | language footnote | latest preview date | latest preview version | latest release date | latest release version | latest_preview_date | latest_preview_version | latest_release_date | latest_release_version | licence | license | logo | logo alt | logo caption | logo upright | logo size | logo title | logo_alt | logo_caption | logo_upright | logo_size | logo_title | middleware | module | name | operating system | operating_system | other_names | platform | programming language | programming_language | released | replaced_by | replaces | repo | screenshot | screenshot alt | screenshot upright | screenshot size | screenshot title | screenshot_alt | screenshot_upright | screenshot_size | screenshot_title | service_name | size | standard | title | ver layout | website | qid }}Template:Main other BitchX Template:IPAc-en is a free IRC client<ref name="cnn-1">Template:Cite news ("If you're already using Linux, then you have your choice of several (IRC) clients. BitchX is a popular one.")</ref> that has been regarded as the most popular ircII-based IRC client.<ref name="the book of irc">Template:Cite book</ref> The initial implementation, written by "Trench" and "HappyCrappy", was a script for the IrcII chat client.<ref name="the book of irc" /> It was converted to a program in its own right by panasync (Colten Edwards). BitchX 1.1 final was released in 2004. It is written in C and is a TUI application utilizing ncurses. GTK+ toolkit support has been dropped. It works on all Unix-like operating systems, and is distributed under a BSD license. It was originally based on ircII-EPIC,<ref name="the book of irc" /> and eventually it was merged into the EPIC IRC client. It supports IPv6,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> multiple servers and SSL, and a subset of UTF-8 (characters contained in ISO-8859-1) with an unofficial patch.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
On several occasions, BitchX has been noted to be a popular IRC client for Unix-like systems.<ref name="cnn-1"/><ref name="ircreviews">Review:BitchX (Amiga) Template:Webarchive, IRCreviews.org, Retrieved 2009-09-29 ("BitchX is favoured by many more experienced IRC users")</ref><ref name="osdir-1">A Day in the Life of #Apache Template:Webarchive, OSDir.com (March 25, 2005), Retrieved 2009-09-29 ("XChat, mIRC, and bitchx are several popular clients")</ref><ref name="overclockers">How to use IRC guide, Overclockersclub.com (Dec. 4, 2006), Retrieved 2009-09-29 ("There are many different clients available, some of the more popular ones include BitchX, XChat, Trillian, BeserIRC, Klient ....")</ref><ref name="broadbandreports">What about P2P on *nix?, Broadbandreports.com (Sept. 13, 2002), Retrieved 2009-09-29 ("There are several IRC clients for Linux. Among the best are X-Chat and BitchX.")</ref><ref name="linuxhelp">BitchX Configuration Guide, Linuxhelp.net (last updated Sept. 19, 2003), Retrieved 2009-09-29 ("BitchX is one of the most popular IRC Client available today for *nix systems.")</ref>
The latest official release is version 1.2.
BitchX does not yet support Unicode.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
SecurityEdit
It was known that early versions of BitchX were vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack in that they could be caused to crash by passing specially-crafted strings as arguments to certain IRC commands. This was before format string attacks became a well-known class of vulnerability.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The previous version of BitchX, released in 2004, has security problems allowing remote IRC servers to execute arbitrary code on the client's machine (CVE-2007-3360, CVE-2007-4584).
On April 26, 2009, Slackware removed BitchX from its distribution, citing the numerous unresolved security issues.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The aforementioned vulnerabilities were fixed in the sources for the 1.2 release.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>