Internet Draft Richard Hartmann Independent Submission Intended status: Informational Expires: April 10, 2011 Updates: 1459, 2810, 2811, 2812, 2813 October 10, 2010 Default Port for IRC via TLS/SSL draft-hartmann-default-port-for-irc-via-tls-ssl-06 Abstract This document describes the established best industry practice of listening on TCP port 6697 for incoming IRC connections encrypted via TLS/SSL. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Hartmann [Page 1]
Internet Draft Default Port for IRC via TLS/SSL October 10, 2010 Table of Contents 1. Rationale ..................................................... 3 2. Technical Details ............................................. 3 3. Security Considerations ....................................... 3 4. IANA Considerations ........................................... 3 5. Informative References ........................................ 4 6. Acknowledgements .............................................. 4 Hartmann [Page 2]
Internet Draft Default Port for IRC via TLS/SSL October 10, 2010 1. Rationale Although system port assignments for both plain text (TCP/UDP port 194) and TLS/SSL encrypted (TCP/UDP port 994) IRC traffic exist [IANALIST], it is common practice amongst IRC networks not to use them for reasons of convenience and general availability on systems where no root access is granted or desired. IRC networks have defaulted to listening on TCP port 6667 for plain text connections for considerable time, now. This is covered by the IRCU assignment of TCP/UDP ports 6665-6669. Similar consensus has been reached within the IRC community about listening on TCP port 6697 for incoming IRC connections encrypted via TLS/SSL. 2. Technical Details An IRC client connects to an IRC server. Immediately after that, a normal TLS/SSL handshake takes place. Once the TLS/SSL connection has been established, a normal IRC connection is established via the tunnel. Optionally, the IRC server may set a specific umode for the client, marking it as using TLS/SSL. Again optionally, an IRC server might offer the option to create channels in such a way that only clients connected via TLS/SSL may join. 3. Security Considerations The lack of a common, well established listening port for IRC via TLS/SSL could lead to end users being unaware of their IRC network of choice supporting TLS/SSL. Thus, they might not use encryption even if they wanted to. It should be noted that this document merely describes client-to- server encryption. There are still other attack vectors like mali- cious administrators, compromised servers, insecure server-to-server communication, channels that do not enforce encryption for all chan- nel members, malicious clients or comprised client machines on which logs are stored. Those attacks can by their very nature not be addressed by client-to- server encryption. Additional safe-guards are needed if a user fears any of the threats above. 4. IANA Considerations An assignment of TCP port 6697 for IRC via TLS/SSL will be requested. The proposed keyword is "irc" and the description "Internet Relay Hartmann [Page 3]
Internet Draft Default Port for IRC via TLS/SSL October 10, 2010 Chat via TLS/SSL": ircs-u 6697/tcp Internet Relay Chat via TLS/SSL Additionally, a clean-up of the current naming scheme will be requested. The author is trying to get into contact with the respec- tive assignees. ircs 994/tcp Internet Relay Chat via TLS/SSL ircs 994/udp Internet Relay Chat via TLS/SSL irc-u1 6665/tcp Internet Relay Chat irc-u2 6666/tcp Internet Relay Chat irc-u3 6667/tcp Internet Relay Chat irc-u4 6668/tcp Internet Relay Chat irc-u5 6669/tcp Internet Relay Chat irc-u1 6665/udp Internet Relay Chat irc-u2 6666/udp Internet Relay Chat irc-u3 6667/udp Internet Relay Chat irc-u4 6668/udp Internet Relay Chat irc-u5 6669/udp Internet Relay Chat 5. Informative References [IANALIST] http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers , Sep 15, 2010 [TOP100] http://irc.netsplit.de/networks/top100.php , Sep 15, 2010 [MAVERICK] http://irc.netsplit.de/networks/lists.php?query=maverick , Sep 27, 2010 6. Acknowledgements Thanks go to the IRC community at large for reaching a consensus. Special thanks go to the IRC operators who were eager to support port 6697 on their respective networks. APPENDIX A: Supporting data As of October 2010, out of the top twenty IRC networks [TOP100],[MAVERICK], ten support TLS/SSL. Only one of those networks does not support TLS/SSL via port 6697 and has no plans to support it. All others supported it already or are supporting it since being contacted by the author. A more detailed analysis is available but does not fit within the scope of this document. Hartmann [Page 4]
Internet Draft Default Port for IRC via TLS/SSL October 10, 2010 Authors' Address Richard Hartmann Munich Germany Email: richih.mailinglist@gmail.com http://richardhartmann.de Version History 00 - initial version 01 - fixed [MAVERICK] 02 - removed self-reference as RFC added reference to [RFC1700] 03 - removed reference to RFC 1700 as per RFC 3232 04 - added section "Technical Details" expanded section "Security Considerations" Changed "Intended status" to "Experimental" at RFC authors' suggestion 05 - Moved "Abstract" to the top of the document Changed "Intended status" back to "Informational" Added renaming suggestions for old assignments Removed section "Comments" Removed ".txt" from document name Removed "Full Copyright Statement" Other minor clean-ups 06 - Introduced unique port keys Hartmann [Page 5]