COMMAND

    mIRC

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    mIRC 5.6

PROBLEM

    Rich Lafferty  posted following.   Amongst other  new features  of
    mIRC,   it   includes   the   following   (from   the   changelog,
    versions.txt):

        40.Added "Track Urls" switch  to System menu in  Channel/Query
           windows, auto-opens  websites as  they are  mentioned in  a
           window.

    With the cooperation of an mIRC user (thanks Lindy_!), he found
    that it does exactly as it says -- when it's enabled, mIRC happily
    tells Netscape (and presumably IE, if that's the Default Browser)
    to open any URLs that it sees.  So:

        * linking to /dev/zero and letting the mIRC user's hard  drive
          fill
        * Banners, banners, banners.
        * Trojan or virus-infected  things, especially if the  browser
          autoexecutes them.
        * http://some.host.name:19/
        * flood an IRC channel  with URLs, causing the browser  to try
          to load them up sequentially

    Anyhow,  wide  open.  Whatever  you  can  put  in a URL, mIRC will
    devotedly tell your default browser to load up.

SOLUTION

    It is simply a matter of  disabling the URL tracking you have  set
    active for the channel or query. End of problem.