How to connect to IRC using Hexchat and TOR

As requested by @pry0cc, well, not really a request… more like I threw out there a idea and pry volunteered me to do a tutorial. Ok, fine, I guess. Anyways, with that all being said and done as the name suggests this is how to securely connect to IRC using Hexchat and ToR. It isn’t that complicated, but I will try to explain (or lack of explaining) how to do it. Basically we will start the ToR service on our Linux box and then we will use that to connect to it via our hexchat client. Now here goes my ‘tutorial’.

First off, we need all the necessary packages. ToR and Hexchat. On Debian it’s as simple as:

sudo apt install tor hexchat

Now with that outta the way… lets modify the torrc file just ever so slightly.

type in a terminal:

sudo nano -w /etc/tor/torrc

You should now see the config for tor (?). Uncomment the line:

#SOCKSPort 9050 # Default: Bind to localhost:9050 for local connections.

And press CTRL + X and hit Y to save it.

In the same terminal, type in:

sudo service tor start

This’ll start the tor service. Now we must configure hexchat to connect to tor (127.0.0.1:9050). In hexchat, select ‘Settings’ and then ‘Preferences’. Hit the option ‘Network setup’. Now, in hostname type in: 127.0.0.1 and in port type in: 9050. Change the ‘Type:’ to Socks5 and don’t change ‘Use proxy for:’ option. Should look something like this:

Screenshot%20from%202018-05-28%2010-47-42

Note: For some reason you must be already connected to hexchat in order to access the preferences thanks to the default setting of displaying the network list. This of course can be disabled.

Now that we got our proxy setup lets connect to 0x00sec at irc.0x00sec.org and port 6697 with SSL enabled and ‘Accept all SSL Certificates’.

I hope this helps with keeping you anonymous and I do apologize if this was quick and dirty ‘tut’. :stuck_out_tongue:

–Techno Forg–

10 Likes

What is your OS? And can you tell me how I set Hexchat to a dark theme?

Hello

You can download some themes from https://hexchat.github.io/themes.html .

And here is how to set it up https://hexchat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appearance.html#theme-files

1 Like

simple, but good.

Have to try this out on my Arch. Thanks!

very useful! thx alot

The ‘hexchat dark theme’ is actually my system theme.

This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.