content/news/2016-09-05-tor-sasl.md

   1 ---
   2 Title: Resurrecting tor-sasl
   3 Author: edk
   4 Date: 2016-09-05T16:09+01:00
   5 Slug: resurrecting-tor
   6 ---
   7
   8 As many of you will no doubt be aware, freenode used to run a Tor hidden
   9 service, providing anonymous access to the network. Unfortunately, this had to
  10 be disabled due to concerns about abuse.
  11
  12 We regret that it has taken some time to resolve this issue but we are now
  13 almost ready to deploy some software updates that will allow us to re-enable the
  14 gateway. We've made one important change: password-based SASL authentication is
  15 disabled over the Tor gateway, so you'll need to generate a client certificate
  16 and add its fingerprint (`/msg NickServ CERT ADD`) over a regular connection
  17 before connecting.
  18
  19 We'd appreciate your help testing this setup on [our
  20 testnet](ircs://testnet.freenode.net:9003). Further instructions can be found
  21 in `#freenode` there. (if you already have a certificate set, the hidden
  22 service is at
  23 [ircs://testnet67chdulhs.onion:6697](ircs://testnet67chdulhs.onion:6697))
  24
  25 Expect the occasional interruption—even if nothing exciting happens, we still
  26 have a few configuration things to take care of. The test network may be reset,
  27 rolled back, or shut down at any time.
  28
  29 Thanks for your patience, and thank you in advance for helping to bring Tor
  30 access back as fast as possible!