Well, it was on one of this usual nights on IRC where nothing REALLY spectacular was happening when 2 guys met in a dead channel.....
The channel however was #cracking on iRCNet, which had once been a very busy place for trading warez, #-numbers and the like but had been left abandoned by the former owners... These 2 guys were namely Cruehead and myself (IcEDraGoN), and since both of us were (and still are) crackers and iRCNet had not even one channel for cracking and similar things we decided to re-open the channel #cracking. Soon another fellow cracker (Badman) joined forces and helped us (a lot !) in our efforts. Together we decided to give our hard work a name, and formed the group M.i.B. (standing for Messing in Bytes in case you havent noticed that big line on the main page :) ). During the setup of #cracking in iRCNet we had to deal with several problems, but many people helped us during times of frustration and without them we wouldnt have succeeded so soon... MiB wants to thank all these people for their help, like cTT, ex33d, maeuschen, Andox, Hammy & Nastard and a lot of other people i might have forgotten here (smack me the next time you come to #cracking and i will be glad to add you here ;) )....
 
 

We founded #cracking as a forum for crackers, a place where knowledge about cracking in general can be exchanged (between more or less experienced crackers) or gained (this aims at the newbies to the art of reverse engineering / cracking). One of the main goals of MiB is to help newbies getting started on the difficult path of gaining cracking knowledge (like finding the appropriate tools and learning how to use them), we will provide tutorials on our homepage and answer questions in the channel for seriously interested people. However, in order to have things running at a relatively smooth level for ALL of us (hey ! that might include YOU as well !) you have to realize some basic facts......
 
   

1. Cracking is NOT the same as hacking...
   cracking is the reverse engineering of software applications in order to modify some parts of it to a more user-friendly ;) state.... hacking is breaking into security systems or gaining access to a secured network without having the proper password at hand (geez, most hackers are just employees who had the bad luck to loose the scrap paper they wrote their network password on... its only natural that they try to make the stupid servers *remember* that they are legal users...wouldnt call THAT illegal, would you ?). Please note that #cracking is NOT a channel for gaining information about hacking, knowledge about hacking is taught elsewhere so please dont bother us about it !
    
      
2. Dont ask us for warez or serial-numbers...
   we dont have them and we dont spread them. Do a search on the proper keywords with your favourite search-engine like AltaVista and you can find dozens of pages with that. Of courze it would be a lot wiser if you decide to LEARN to crack the applications on your OWN ! Then you wont ever have to search again... DO IT YOURSELF ! ;)
    
      
3. .... and of courze we dont like op-begging... (we are no exception in IRC)
   we had quite a hard time in the channel when a netsplit left the channel without ops and a *special* bot (i wont bother to name him here) got on our nerves with begging us for ops (the bot got a lifetime /ignore and a ban) so we have some kind of prejudice against this behaviour. Everyone who begs for ops will be kicked without excessive warning !