IRC Server

The IRC server is hosted in a VM. We do not have to forward any ports towards our actual host, because TOR will take care of this by forwarding it to the TOR network. However, it does need internet to be able to connect to the network.

The IRC server only listens to localhost:6667 and will be reachable via the TOR hostname that can be found at /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname, on port 6667.

Connecting to IRC server

To connect to the IRC server you need to setup an IRC client, you also need to run a TOR proxy on the background. You need to make sure that all IRC traffic goes through this proxy.

Domain Name

We use tor V3 domain names, we generated it with , which provides us a nice interface to generate a prefixed domain name.

The reason for picking V3 is because it has better crypto, and in general better security. The downside is that the URL is extremely long, but because this is a botnet project we prefer security over usability.

Running IRC server

There is a docker container available that handles most of the setup for this particular setup. The only thing you still need to do is edit the torrc and include your keys inside the right directory.

To build the docker container you can simply run docker build -t "{name}" . from the project root.

Setup

We recommend setting this up via a docker-compose file. The docker compose file is defined as follows

irc:
  image: 'x0rz3q/inspircd:latest'
  restart: always
  container_name: inspircd_tor
  volumes:
    - '/srv/inspircd-tor/inspircd:/etc/inspircd'
    - '/srv/inspircd-tor/tor-lib:/var/lib/tor'
    - '/srv/inspircd-tor/tor-etc:/etc/tor'

After the tor container is running, do the following. Setup the right hidden service port forwarding and directory inside /srv/inspircd-tor/tor-etc/torrc, after that simply reboot the server and it should work. If you want a custom domain name then you need to place your keys inside /srv/inspircd-tor/tor-lib.

Connecting to The Server

To connect to the server you need two things

• An IRC client
• Tor Installed

In this part we only focus on HexChat, this is because it is easily configured. Therefore, make sure you have both tor and hexchat installed on your system.

First we need to configure the tor to allow us to connect via a SocksPort, open the config located at /etc/tor/torrc. Uncomment the following line

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

Now restart tor with systemctl restart tor.

---

Next we will configure hexchat.

Create a new network by adding new, fill out the following settings, make sure to fill out the right domain name where yourdomainname.onion is stated.

Then press close and connect. The connection will still not be able to be established but we can then easily configure the tor proxy.

Next click on Settings -> Preferences in the menu bar at the top. Under the Network tab click on Network setup. Fill out the following information under the Proxy Server section.

Then simply reconnect to the network and everything should be connect normally.

---

Date: 09-02-2020