How is encryption setup on IRC? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-09-09 14:55 What standards do they use? And how would I set it up? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OMGItsCheezWTF · 2019-09-09 15:51 Out of the box, none. Absolutely none. IRC is a completely open protocol and hides nothing or encrypts nothing by default. However lots of networks have added TLS support, which encrypts data between you and the server, it does NOT encrypt your message content, so if it sends what you say to someone else and they are not using TLS, that will be sent in the clear. Clients would need to be explicitly configured to use TLS, most don't use it by default. Some people have added script that adds OTR support to IRC, but it relies on both sides having the script, and I don't know how key exchange is managed. I've never heard of anyone using this seriously though. IRC is from a different time, by default it even exposes your full hostname / IP address to all who care to see it (many networks now add masking to stop other users seeing it, but even that's not a default in many cases), it doesn't encrypt any of your messages and doesn't offer anything in the way of authentication, integrity or authorisation. There are chat systems that are better if you want any of those. Telegram, Signal etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-09-09 17:38 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OMGItsCheezWTF · 2019-09-09 17:42 They are protocol implementations as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- defaultxr · 2019-09-09 18:12 Matrix seems the best solution for modern messaging. Fully free and open spec and reference clients/servers, federated, optional e2e encryption (part of the standard, enableable on a per room basis), etc. Even has "bridges" to link together networks on other protocols, i.e. the entirety of freenode and various other irc networks are accessible via matrix. Much better than telegram and signal imo. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- justjanne · 2019-09-10 08:10 Signal forbids third-party implementations from using their servers, or name, or anything, so that's not exactly useful. And Telegram doesn't even have open source servers, so same issue. Matrix works — the code is just absolutely horrible, the bridges constantly breaks, there's no proper way to GC old messages, you can easily make it hang, it uses resources like nothing else (on server and client), and the protocol with longpolling over HTTP is ridiculously inefficient. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saber_UK · 2019-09-10 08:38 >Fully free and open spec and reference clients/servers IRC has all of these. >federated Federation isn't as much of a good idea as people seem to think it is. It has pretty much all of the issues of centralising to a specific network (e.g. asking people to pick what silo they want to put their data in without the average user actually having any qualification to make that decision) without any of the benefits (e.g. the ability for networks to deal with abuse by allowing who can connect to their networks) and with a bunch of other issues on top (e.g.people on certain nodes seeing things that users on other nodes do not due to instance-specific defederation rules, spam filtering, or network issues). Ultimately federation solves none of the real world problems with IRC and just adds problems on top imo. It also almost universally results in there being one giant node which essentially gets to dictate policy for the other nodes (e.g. Mastodon.social, Matrix.org) which defeats the point of federation entirely. >optional e2e encryption (part of the standard, enableable on a per room basis), etc Matrix's encryption protocol is one of the few parts of it that I don't think are terrible but IRC will have this very soon. You can use OTR for user-to-user communications for now though. >, i.e. the entirety of freenode and various other irc networks are accessible via matrix YMMV but many channels i'm in have banned the Matrix bridge because its [so broken](https://na.reddit.com/r/irc/comments/c1bzdr/new_to_irc _what_is_matrix/ercnrf8/?context=3). I expect we'll see networks start blocking it if nothing improves. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- defaultxr · 2019-09-10 13:30 > IRC has all of these. Indeed. Check the comment I was replying to, which suggested Telegram and Signal as systems better than IRC. My point is if we're going with a "better" IM system, it probably shouldn't be one like Telegram, whose server is closed source and proprietary, or one like Signal, whose author [doesn't even want third party clients made for the service](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/). Neither seem worth suggesting as IRC replacements to me for these reasons; to me, one of the great things about IRC is how the protocol is a free and open standard, and most of the main servers and clients are free/open too. Both of these are true of Matrix as well. > the ability for networks to deal with abuse by allowing who can connect to their networks Matrix supports this for homeservers; there is a whitelisting option to prevent it from federating with servers that aren't on the whitelist. You also mention Mastodon, another federated protocol which also supports this, in the form of domain blocklists. > It also almost universally results in there being one giant node which essentially gets to dictate policy for the other nodes (e.g. Mastodon.social, Matrix.org) which defeats the point of federation entirely. I don't really think this was caused by the fact that these are federated protocols. And of course if the giant nodes become problematic, users can always switch to another, and in Matrix's case, do so without losing access to any of the rooms they were using. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NQGbk2KTJ · 2019-10-08 15:57 hexchat comes with a blowfish plugin you can use: [https://github.com/ hexchat/hexchat/tree/master/plugins/fishlim](https://github.com/hexcha t/hexchat/tree/master/plugins/fishlim) ​ There's also other scripts availble. For instance this one for weechat uses AES256 [https://github.com/LeftyBC/weechancrypt](https://github.c om/LeftyBC/weechancrypt).