source: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/9097/info

sircd has been reported prone to a privilege escalation vulnerability. It has been reported that any user logged on to the sircd server, may set their usermode to +o, or operator mode.

An attacker may exploit this condition to hijack IRC channels or impersonate users, these privileges may aid the attacker in further attacks launched against the target server. 

MODE <nick> +o