Setting up Tor to connect to IRC network!

Freenode to EliteBNC bouncer to Tor!

First time I connected to IRC using webchat.freenode.net web portal with no encryption and IP hiding. With time, I moved to EliteBNC bouncer to read all the messages even when I am offline.

Now, the time has demanded me to evolve a bit further. This is an instructable blog post on how to set up "Tor" proxy to connect to my #dgplug folks.

The Onion Routing Protocol!

What is Tor? Since this blog post is not about Tor, so I am going to answer it in one line.

Tor is just another protocol used to connect to internet, but anonymously!

Don't fall for my words, you should delve more deeper yourself. Don't know what I am talking about? Read the reference section at the end to know more about IRC and Tor.

Instructions

1. Install IRC client and tor dependecies (torsocks).
   
   
   sudo dnf install tor
   
   


2. Setup your IRC client, in my case weechat (An IRC client, that I use to connect to IRC).
   
   
   sudo dnf install weechat
   
   


3. Start Tor daemon to set up proxy.
   
   
   sudo systemctl start tor 
   

   
   
    sudo systemctl status tor
   
   


4. Open Weechat and add proxy to your IRC client. Run the following commands on the client itself.
   
   
   /proxy add tor socks5 127.0.0.1 9050
   


5. Set up proxy to your Server.
   
   
   /set irc.server.elitebnc.proxy "tor"
   


6. Enjoy bypassing firewall on IRC :)

Now, Your IRC client should be using tor proxy on port 9050 which is the default sock5 proxy port on Tor. Enjoy using Tor!

(You need to start the tor daemon using systemctl everytime you reboot your system. You might want to start the service automatically. If yes, follow this blog post here.)

Why I did this?

Now, most of you guys must be thinking on why I should add the overhead of Tor on my IRC network? True! But you must already know,

"Necessity is the mother of Invention"

 ~Plato

Similarly, at an event, the internet provided to us had a firewall that rejects all invalid certificates transaction on it and unfortunately, my EliteBNC delta server got it's certificate expired since April 2018.

And thus, I am unable to connect to my #dgplug folks over IRC on this firewall enabled network due to invalid certificates of my EliteBNC server.

I knew, I had to bypass firewall somehow and thus Tor came to my mind.

Reference

1. https://buildthesys.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/how-tu-use-weechat-with-tor/ 
2. https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/6939/configure-tor-as-proxy
3. https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en