Netsplit (and riding the split)
jargonops culturehacking
A partition of an IRC network when the link between servers drops: each side keeps running, users on the far side appear to quit en masse, and when the link returns the two halves merge their state back together.
The merge is where the exploit lived. On a network without registration services, a channel that becomes empty on one side of a split gives the first person to join it operator status - so a patient attacker would wait for a split, join the isolated empty channel, and inherit control of the whole channel when the halves rejoined. Riding the netsplit is the classic IRC takeover, and the countermeasures it forced - always-on bots, channel guards, eventually services - are the reason later networks look nothing like EFnet. It is also a general lesson: partition plus automatic merge is a security problem, not just an availability one.
Also known as: net split, riding the netsplit, channel takeover, split riding