This is just a quick note to inform you that on Saturday, October 20, at about 4pm ET (GMT-4), I’ll be attempting to get SSL connections working.
The key word here is attempting! I installed an SSL certificate for the www.goodchatting.com domain, so it’ll be time to see if I can get one installed for irc.goodchatting.com and I think I’ll have to recompile the server to permit SSL connections.
Why?
Because, in this day and age, privacy is ever-more important. Your messages to the server will be encrypted while in transit. And, since we’re a single-server network, your messages won’t be sent unencrypted to another server, since we don’t have another server. Of course, your level of security will depend upon the connections of others in your channels. If someone in a channel isn’t connected via SSL, then the contents of the channel as they see it is still going to be insecure.
I should note that this isn’t more insecure than it’s always been. Nothing has changed. I’m just trying to make us more secure than we have historically been.
We’ll see how it goes! Updates here and on Twitter (@goodchatting) as events warrant.