THE 'BASTARD' PERL SCRIPT ---- Dr. FLonkenstein, Alcatroll Labs Inc.
===========================================================================
I. Purpose
The purpose of this quick and dirty written script is to generate
automatic postings on usenet. You can specify one or more usernames,
and newsgroup(s) where your preferred bastards post in, and the script
will "hook" a message to each and every post the bastards make.
The reply itself is made up of a text, randomly chosen omong others
in a given directory. This textfile is a template text with here and there
nouns replaced by the tag <n>, and adjectives replaced by the tab <a>.
The script will then replace these tags with randomly chosen nouns and
adjectives that are picked up from standard nous and adjective files.
This ensures that your BI stays low. The goal of using this script is
essentially for flaming. Your bot can insult your preferred bastards
whole night long, while you're doing entirely different things (like
having a drink with your friends). It is gauaranteed fun seeing your
opponents reply to a bot, and others that draw their attention upon
this fact.
But maybe there are other applications, let me know, and have fun.
II. Modalities
a) Copyright.
-------------
This is copyleft software, so you may freely modify it, distribute it,
and all that stuff, only if you leave a reference to the
(totally fake) Alcatroll Labs Incorporation (:-)
b) State of the software
-------------------------
The code is very clumsy, I admit, but what do you want,
it's free isn't it?
I tried to comment here and there. Have a look about the tricky way (=easy)
to keep an object oriented structure in a text file, this is in fact
(ohhh great tabou !!!!!!) self modifying code, hehehehe, why not !
c) Installation
---------------
In a directory of your choice you will have following files :
bastards.pl
bastards.pm
news.pm
post.pm
trbot.pm
bastarfl.htm (this file)
For each bastard you target, you have to have a separate directory.
In these directories you place the template files you invent for
your bastard (the extension of the file does not matter).
Here's an example :
-------<template example>---------
proving to be a paranoid <a> <n> again. Get a life, lame luser !
------</template example>---------
You have to have a (series of) noun file(s) somewhere, and a
(series of) adjective file(s) too. The extension and name does
not matter.
Once everything is in place, you must edit the bastard.pm file. This
is the database that you keep of the bastards that you are targetting.
this file looks like this :
-------<database example>---------
$bastards = [
"test",
{Nouns=> ".\\enouns.txt",
Group=> "alt.test",
From=> "Heartbeat",
Prefs=> ".\\pref.txt",
Last=> "",
Templ=> "JSF",
Botname=> " \"Ben Bareta\" <ben\@yahooo.com>",
Adj=> ".\\eadj.txt",
}
,
]
-------</database example>--------
This is an example where there is only one target, the poster
with the nick 'Heartbeat'. This is (at this very moment since
a few months) a real usenet 'from header' in the alt.test group
that posts every 9 mins (or so I think). This is this an ideal
way to test your bot !
The first line inside the structure is "test", this denotes a
name that you give to your bastard. It is a name of your choice
and does not influence the application. Then, on the second line you
specify the name and path of your nouns file (watch out for the
quoted backspaces !!). On the third line you mention the group
where the bastard posts. You can add more groups to this line
(separated by commas) to indicate that the message will also
be crossposted to these groups too. The fourth line indicates
where your 'prefixes' file is. This is only for the french language
where you can have an additionnal list of 'prefixes'. Create an
empty file if you're not intending working in french.
The fifth line keeps track of the last time the messages from
your bastard were read. You do not have to change this, the
scripts rewrites the database to the file on a regular base,
so your script is always synchronized with the postings of your
bastards. The sixth line tells the script in which direcory
the template files belonging to this bastards are residing.
The seventh line explaines how the "from" header will look like,
and finally the eighth line shows the name and path of the
adjective file.
After having edited the database file, you have to edit the packages
post.pm and news.pm so that they reflect a newsserver that posts
the messages and a newsserver that reads messages. They can be the
same, but in my case I had to use two for personal reasons. I have
put the templates "your_news_server", "your_username", "your_password",
in order to be replaced by yourself.
You are also strongly advised to change the headers so that your
posts seem to come from any location you want.
Launch the perl script bastards.pl to activate the robot.
III. How it works
First, the script reads your database in order to find out
which bastards there are, their newsgroups, the corresponding
template directories, the used noun, prefix and adjective files.
Then, bastard per bastard, the script looks up the message id's
of your target in his own ng. This is done by the 'news.pm' package
that receives a database structure object as a parameter, and
returns the list of message ids of this poster. At the same time it
updates the database in central memory.
Then the package 'post.pm' takes care of each of these messages,
calls the 'trbot.pm' package to construct a reply and posts it.
The trbot.pm package does the substitution of the nouns and
adjectives in the random chosen template file.
IV. Modifications that can be done
a) Avoid your target morphs
--------------------------------
If you study the news.pm package, you will see that this package scans
the headers of each message of the newsgroup. This includes occasional
NNTP-header IP addresses, and email addresses. It is possible to modify
the code so that it also keeps these data in the database. This way you
can avoid that your target changes his nickname resulting in your bot
loosing its prey. The target must, to avoid your bot, change email, nick
and IP address at the same time.
b) Let the bot morph itself, in order to avoid killfiles
--------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, you can use a random algorithm like the one used
in the trbot.pm package to compose a different nickname for
each post.
c) Change the reply policy
--------------------------
You can change the way your bot replies in different ways. It must be
possible to analize the text of the original message, get a clue about
the content and respond corrspondingly. Another funny effect is to
make your reply by modifying the original text with a command like:
s/([bdfkmnpqrstvw])([aeiou])/$1j$2/gi
d) Change the default wait time
-------------------------------
After an outburst of replies, a sleep command is issued that puts
the script asleep for a while. If you keep this time short the script
will answer almost instantly when the target posts, but is will consume
system resources on the other hand.
e) Change the default 'Last' value
----------------------------------
The first time when using the script, you installed the value of the field
'Last' to NULL. When the script sees this value it automagically assumes
that it has to look for messages younger than an hour ago. You can also
change this value to a bigger value, resulting in a huge spew of replies
to your bastard (if he posts a lot).
(c) Dr. Flonkenstein 2002
