IRC Improvements

SUIDNet writes: "The first ever secure IRC network has opened. All your communications on the SUIDNet are completely encrypted so no one can just sniff the network and watch your conversations. In addition, anyone who connects unencrypted automatically has a "-insecure" appended to their hostname and are banned from all SECURE channels. Check it out for yourself at http://suidnet.org or irc.suidnet.org." We also got a submission about a plan to improve IRC routing, Open Redundant-Link IRCd.

Comments

Demystifying Suidnet

[h1kari]

I am one of the suidnet admins and I'd just like to comment to some of the posts here to make things a little more clearer.

Suidnet is a very new network, it has only been around for less than a week and we're still working on getting the kinks out, and we have never fully guaranteed security. All we do guarantee is that your link to the server and the links connecting the servers will be encrypted and that we are trying our best to ensure that all of the servers are secure. This is not fully implemented yet, but it will be within a week, so please do not exchange sensitive information until notified on the website.

Currently the ircd source is experimental but will be publicly released when fully finished (it is based on hybrid6rc4). I can say that we use stunnel to ssl wrap all of the connections between the servers and for connected clients (useful for running one server for encrypting/decrypting and one for ircd). I can also say that we only made modifications to the ircd to obtain hostnames of users connected through stunnel and to append -insecure to unencrypted connections and that none of them are run in debug mode.

The basic idea is that unencrypted users get -insecure appended to their hostname so if you are connected securely and want to run in secure mode, you can /ignore *!*@*-insecure, or if you want to run a secure channel you can /ban *!*@*-insecure, etc.

Oh, and all of the swapping of MP3s and kid porn that is done over /dcc will not be encrypted unless both ends run irc clients that encrypt dcc. We can't even guarantee that dcc will work the same as with normal irc yet.

Any/all comments are welcome as always, and I'm glad to see all of the discussion going on here on /.

-Ttyl

Depends

[StandardDeviant]

Friend of mine works at (large computer manufacturing company). They have a non-official irc channel, sort of an e-WaterCooler...

Anyway, internal MIS dept. found out about it and started sniffing the network, and logged EVERYTHING that was said in the channel over a three week period. Talk of stupid bosses, who was screwing who, drug taking at weekend parties, the works.

Upshot: 6 people fired, 3 more severely reprimanded.

So, yeah, if you want to chat at work without "the man" hearing everything, this is a pretty important development. :^)

--

Negative people on slashdot.

[GigsVT]

My god... I can't believe you people sometimes. You think carnivore is bad, and you pontificate about encryption being the only way to secure your email from the Government's prying eyes. Then this story comes out, and of the comments so far, no one has anything good to say about it.

Don't you think the Government already has some sort of monitoring system for IRC? Don't you think that this would at least provide some higher level of security than none at all? Sure, none of you all will admit to using IRC, but that doesn't matter, because hundreds of thousands of other people do use IRC, and in the end, we are the ones that know how to protect ourselves, they are the ones that don't.

I think this system is a good idea, and while some of you have valid points, there are limits to the security of a public messaging system. After all, all security eventually boils down to trusted authority regarding identity, which is something IRC may never have.
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