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 ║            v2026.1.1 - by Tony Mattke aka tonhE              ║
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Playground Plus v2026.1.1

Note

This repository is not an official repository maintained by the original Playground+ developers. It is a community effort to modernize and preserve the PG+ codebase. The companion playground-plus-patches repository is also unofficial.

Caution

Security bulletin — HCAdmin login flow

Two vulnerabilities affect talkers with HCAdmin names defined in config.msg that lack active pfiles:

• Unlimited password attempts against the HC password challenge — no rate limiting or lockout.
• HCAdmin privileges granted before password verification — connecting clients are momentarily treated as HCAdmin before check_hcadmin_pw runs.

Both are fixed in v2026.1.1. Operators running prior or modified PG+ codebases should review the writeup and apply the patches: playground-plus#2.

The classic talker server, modernized for 2026.

Playground Plus is a multi-user chat server ("talker") with a rich history stretching back to the early 1990s. Originally built on the EW-Too codebase, it evolved through Summink and Playground 96 into Playground+, which became one of the most widely deployed talker platforms of its era.

This release brings PG+ into the modern age. It builds cleanly on current 64-bit Linux systems with zero errors and zero warnings, fixes critical security vulnerabilities, and replaces deprecated system APIs - all while preserving the talker experience that operators and users know.

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What's New in v2026.1.1

Released 30th April 2026

Security Fixes

• HCAdmin login flow hardened — see the security bulletin above and playground-plus#2 for full details. Three changes:
  • HC password challenge now fires only when the named hcadmin has no pfile (saved hcadmins authenticate via their pfile password as expected).
  • HCAdmin privileges (HCADMIN_INIT, ressied_by) are now granted only after a successful HC password match, gated on a new HC_AUTH session flag — never on name match alone.
  • Per-IP failure tracking with a 10-minute lockout after 5 failed HC password attempts (add_ip_fail / is_ip_locked in socket.c); enforced at connection accept.

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What's New in v2026.1.0

Released 8th February 2026

Security Fixes

• Password hashing upgraded from DES to SHA-512 via crypt(), with backwards-compatible login for existing DES hashes and an automatic upgrade prompt for users
• Command injection vulnerability fixed in the email welcome feature - system() replaced with fork()/execlp() so crafted email addresses cannot execute shell commands
• Buffer overflow protection across the codebase - sprintf() replaced with snprintf() in admin, commands, glue, plists, and room code
• Intercom hardening - buffer overflows patched, strcpy replaced with strncpy, division-by-zero guard added, vsprintf replaced with vsnprintf, and non-null-terminated packet data fixed
• Format-string vulnerabilities — printf(stack) and similar calls allowed format-string attacks. Changed to printf("%s", stack) across multiple files (17+ locations).
• Command injection in email — system() call in commands.c passed user-controlled data (email, inet_addr) into a shell command without sanitization.
• vsprintf() stack buffer overflows — Unbounded vsprintf() into 150-byte buffers replaced with vsnprintf() throughout.
• strcpy() buffer overflows — Numerous unbounded strcpy() calls into fixed-size buffers replaced with bounds-checked alternatives.

Critical Fixes

• 100% CPU busy-spin — select() had a zero timeout, causing the main loop to spin continuously. Added a 200ms timeout for proper pacing.
• 64-bit pointer truncation — Pointer-to-int casts throughout the codebase silently truncated addresses on 64-bit systems, causing crashes and memory corruption. Fixed across 10+ files by using proper pointer subtraction and %p/%zu format specifiers.
• Hardcoded ROOT path — Boot would fail immediately due to a wrong hardcoded install path in root.h.
• Deprecated sigpause(0) — Legacy BSD call in the main event loop did nothing on modern glibc; removed.

Network Modernization

• gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr replaced with getaddrinfo/getnameinfo in both the talker and intercom server - the old functions are removed in some modern libc implementations
• select() replaced with poll() to remove the FD_SETSIZE 1024 file descriptor limit
• Byte-at-a-time socket reads replaced with 4KB bulk buffered reads for a massive performance improvement

Intercom Subsystem (23 bugs found, disabled by default)

• SIGCHLD handler called fatal_error() — Intercom crashed every time a child process exited normally. Replaced with proper waitpid() reaping.
• Broken calloc macro — A trailing semicolon in the #define broke all if/else blocks using calloc.
• Network data never null-terminated — strcpy() on raw packet data read past buffer boundaries. Replaced with memcpy + explicit termination.
• 6 vsprintf() stack overflows — All replaced with vsnprintf().
• Unix socket path overflow — Unbounded strcpy() into 108-byte sun_path.
• Wrong socket address family — Used hp->h_addrtype instead of AF_INET.

Compiler & Build Fixes

• Builds cleanly on GCC 13.3 with -Wall - zero warnings across all four binaries (talker, angel, ident_server, intercom)
• Fixed -Wrestrict warnings from sprintf() writing into its own source buffer
• Fixed -Wstringop-truncation warnings with explicit null terminators after strncpy() calls
• Added IGNORE_RET macro for intentionally unchecked write() return values
• Fixed unused variables, operator precedence, misleading indentation, and signal mask initialization
• Fixed wc -l display in Makefile build output

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Building

cd src
make configure    # generates Makefile from your system config
make install      # builds all four binaries

Requirements

• GCC 10 or later (tested on GCC 13.3.0)
• 64-bit Linux (tested on Linux 6.8.0 x86_64, glibc 2.39)
• Standard POSIX libraries (libcrypt)

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Applying Patches to Modified Talkers

If you're running a customized PG+ talker, see the companion playground-plus-patches repository which provides the same fixes as modular, per-category patches designed to apply cleanly to modified codebases. Tag v2026.1.1 in the patches repository corresponds to this release.

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ctl Management Script

A drop-in server management script installed to bin/ctl by apply.sh.

bin/ctl start     # Start the server stack (angel + talker)
bin/ctl stop      # Stop everything gracefully
bin/ctl restart   # Full restart (stop + start)
bin/ctl status    # Show running processes and uptime
bin/ctl reboot    # Seamless reboot via angel
bin/ctl log error # Tail a log file (angel|error|boot|connection|intercom)

The script auto-detects its location relative to your talker's directory structure. No configuration needed. If proxy support is enabled (HAVE_PROXY in autoconfig.h or a proxy binary in bin/), proxy management is automatically included.

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Heritage

This code has a long and storied lineage:

EW-Too (1992-93)          Simon Marsh (Burble)
    |
Summink (1994)            Neil Peter Charley (Athanasius),
    |                     Michael Simms (Grim), Nicolai Plum (Nicolai)
    |
Playground 96 (1995)      Mike Bourdaa (traP), Chris Allegretta (astyanax),
    |                     Hans Peterson (Nogard), Valerie Kelly (vallie)
    |
Playground+ 1.0 (1998)    Richard Lawrence (Silver),
    |                     J. Bradley Christian (phypor),
    |                     Geoffrey Swift (blimey)
    |
Playground+ 2026.1.0      Tony Mattke (tonhe)

Credits

Playground Plus

Silver (Richard Lawrence), phypor (J. Bradley Christian), and blimey (Geoffrey Swift) - the authors of Playground Plus, a stable, bug-fixed, and improved version of Playground 96 with a wealth of additional features.

Sadly development stopped in 1998 at the height of talker population.

Playground 96

traP (Mike Bourdaa), astyanax (Chris Allegretta), Nogard (Hans Peterson), and vallie (Valerie Kelly) - who drastically reworked the Summink code into Playground 96.

Summink

Athanasius (Neil Peter Charley), Grim (Michael Simms), and Nicolai (Nicolai Plum) - who made significant changes to the EW-Too base.

EW-Too

Burble (Simon Marsh) - who wrote the original EW-Too code, with significant advancements by Chris Hughes and Jonathan Sloman.

Contributing Code

The following people contributed code included in Playground+ by kind permission:

Slaine, Oolon, Grim, subtle, tonhe, Segtor, Nightwolf, Accolade, Sammael, Bron, Nevyn, Maverick, Alaundo, and ekto.

Ident Server

Copyright 1995-1998 Neil Peter Charley (Athanasius), with Solaris/BSD compatibility portions copyright 1996 James William Hawtin. Distributed as part of the PG+ package with permission.

IChan / Intercom

IChan (intercom channel) copyright Richard Lawrence and Mike Bourdaa. The intercom code copyright Michael Simms (Grim).

License

Playground Plus is free software distributed under the terms established by its original authors. The code and its components carry the following terms:

• The Playground+ codebase may be freely used and distributed for running talker servers, provided that credit is given to the original authors in the talker's version command and/or help credits.
• The version command credits must not be removed or altered beyond adding entries for your own installed modules.
• Individual components carry their own terms:
  • Ident server code: Copyright Neil Peter Charley and James William Hawtin. May be used as part of PG+ with credit. May not be redistributed separately without the express permission of the authors.
  • Spodlist code: Copyright Richard Lawrence. Licensed for distribution within PG+ only. Redistribution in other forms requires written consent.
  • IChan/Intercom code: Copyright Richard Lawrence, Mike Bourdaa, and Michael Simms. May not be redistributed without prior permission.

The 2026 modernization patches are provided freely for the PG+ community under the same terms as the original codebase.