OUCHnet

OUCHnet is built on a foundation of absolute free speech, with two rules:

1. No CSAM distribution or discussion
2. No network attacks or spamming

Everything else is left up to the channel owners, OUCHnet as a network does not censor free speech.

Channel owners may censor or add additional rules as they see fit.

Connecting

Try our webchat or connect to our round robin domain below. Alternatively, you may select a specific server directly from the list below.

Server List

Our ircd linkage is done over an internal wireguard network to provide a more secure tunnel between servers.

TLS

OUCHnet is TLS only. We do not allow plaintext connections to the network.

Tor

See tor

Channels

Official OUCHnet channels

• #ouch - general chat
• #help - OUCHnet help

Misc

netsplit.de stats

Uptime Monitor

Opers

OUCHnet is owned and operated by LexFerenda

Current Staff

Former Staff

Services

OUCHnet runs Anope IRC Services

• NickServ Nickname registration service
• ChanServ Channel registration and management service
• HostServ vHost request service

Non-Anope 'Services' provided by ouch

• ouchbot Simple url title bot

NickServ

NickServ handles operations involving nicknames

• Registration
• Login

Generally nick registration is recommended as it enables you to register channels, get/set flags, etc.. via ChanServ and keeps your nick safe. A valid email is not required. To reset or change your nickserv password without a valid email please ask in #help for assistance

Registration

Registering your nickname on ouch is simple and does not require an email address

the following registers your current nickname with password bar with recovery email foo@bar.com

/msg NickServ REGISTER bar foo@bar.com

// Same thing without email:

/msg NickServ register bar

Nickserv will send you a code to verify with. (this may change in the future if exploited)

Login

We support the following methods of login in order of preference:

• CertFP (More complex, Highest Security)
• SASL PLAIN (Username/Password over SASL)
• Password Forwarding (Forwards password provided to server to NickServ)

CertFP

See CertFP

SASL

To use SASL ensure you are using TLS and set your client to use SASL with your nickname and nickserv password

Password Forwarding

To use password forwarding ensure you are using TLS and set the server password to your nickserv password. OUCH servers will forward the password to NickServ

Manual

To manually identify once connected with your nickname use:

/msg NickServ identify <nick> {password}

nick is optional as long as your current nick matches your nickserv account

Enforce

To Enable nick enforcement (not allowing someone to use your nick if you are not online) enable the ENFORCE flag.

/msg NickServ set enforce on

Once enabled if someone connects and uses your nick, they have 30 seconds to login or their nick will be force changed

CertFP

The recommended way to secure your nickserv account

Generating a cert

The following will generate a ed25519 compatible with ouch and most other ircds

openssl req -x509 -new -newkey ed25519 -sha256 -nodes -out ouch.pem -keyout ouch.pem

Finding your fingerprint

Once connected with your client configured to use the certificate, performing a whois on yourself will return your fingerprint

Adding fingerprint to nickserv

When logged into NickServ you can simply /msg nickserv cert add {fingerprint}

Client Specifics

ZNC

ZNC has a cert module that you can enable. Once enabled you can copy/paste your cert file ouch.pem into the Certificates portion of the web interface

weechat

Weechat uses the /set command to edit the network configuration, however, /fset is commonly used to check for specific options. For example, /fset sasl will return all the sasl options in weechat. After creating your cert .pem file, make a directory where your weechat configuration is stored called /certs (it doesn't matter what the name is) and put the file there. You can use %h/certs/client.pem as shorthand.

If you are using tor make sure the tor fingerprint is set, not the fingerprint derived from your .pem file. The following options need to be /set in weechat:

irc.server.<network name>.sasl_mechanism external
irc.server.<network name>.sasl_password <password>
irc.server.<network name>.sasl_username <username>

irc.server.<network name>.tls on
irc.server.<network name>.tls_cert %h/certs/client.pem
irc.server.<network name>.tls_fingerprint A4BC80696DAC936677DE0DCEA429D3B985C8A67449C5E54EB773BE5F5FBE9ECD
irc.server.<network name>.tls_verify on

If you aren't using tor you can leave the tls_fingerprint option empty.

hexchat

TODO

Virtual Hostnames

OUCHnet by default masks your IP from all users except staff.

You may set a custom vhost if desired:

Ouchnet uses hostserv, part of Anope services. You can find a list of commands available by using the /msg hostserv help command or using /query hostserv help in most clients.

If you need further assistance, you can request it from one of the opers in #help.

Please be patient as certain opers may not be online when you are. Request once in #help and a staff member will assist when available.

ChanServ

ChanServ handles all channel related services

Channel Registration

To register a new channel make sure you are registered and signed in with nickserv

/msg ChanServ register #channel

ChanServ commands

By default (unless you turn FANTASY flag off in chanserv for your channel) any line prefixed with ! is forwarded to chanserv as a commnd. For example typing !kickban RandomNickname {reason} will kick and set a ban on RandomNickname's hostmask with reason being optional. Without the FANTASY flag you would instead message ChanServ directly like so /msg ChanServ kickban #channel RandomNickname {reason}

Kick/Banning users from your channel

kick

kick simply kicks the user from your channel via chanserv. Not very different from using a direct /kick as a channel op. Takes an optional reason

/msg ChanServ kick #channel RandomNickname spamming

kickban

kickban sets a ban on the specified users hostmask and then kicks them.

/msg ChanServ kickban #channel RandomNickname spamming

ban

ban similar to kickban but does not remove the user after setting the ban

/msg ChanServ ban #channel RandomNickname spamming

unban

unban removes a ban

/msg ChanServ unban #chat *!*@*.host.mask

ouchbot

A simple bot for url titles is available for any channel. To use in your channel simply /invite ouchbot

• html <title>'s
• youtube video info
• reddit post info
• twitter post info

vim corrections

ouchbot also has vim style corrections enabled

blackbeard420> hey guys im homo
blackbeard420> s/homo/home
ouchbot> blackbeard420 meant to say: hey guys im home

Incident Reports

2025-04-23

Ouch website and webchat were down briefly. This was caused by a swarm scan exhausting resources. Measures were put in place to prevent this from occuring again.

2023-07-04

irc.supernets.org spam wave hit our network and many others. Many opers were offline at the time leaving a large spam hit. Once opers were back filters were in place and auto nickserv registration was disabled briefly. Some channels set the +R flag to prevent unregistered users from joining. After a few days passed and the gline list built up the spam wave stopped. We have since enabled an improved regex filter module to allow us to catch more spam on demand. Also as a reminder their are chanserv flood protections you can enable for your channel which will kickban flooders. During a spamwave the best practice would be to set channel mode +s (which hides your channel from /list and /who). Now for the future we are far more protected from this sort of attack as we have the proper modules in place ready to go. We did not origianlly have filter modules because we want complete free speech but have found it useful in network wide spam attacks.

2023-03-22

Early in the moring forest.ouch.chat had lost linkage with the network. This was resolved around 08:00 EST. Atheme Services were also updated this morning as well causing a 5 minute outage of nickserv, chanserv, etc... forest.ouch.chat and pegasus.ouch.chat were officially removed from the network due to lack of traffic and low user counts for now.

2022-12-21

Around 19:00 UTC the server hosting services (nickserv/chanserv/etc..) was migrated. During this migration a disk failure occured. This failure uncovered an issue in our fallback linkage for the server nodes. I attempted to restore operations quickly when i was made aware by correcting linkage issues. Due to personal work conflicts i was unable to restore services fully until 01:00 UTC. This issue should not happen again and uncovered a weakness in our redundant linkages that is now fixed. Thank you for your patience.

• blackbeard420

Connecting Via Tor

Prior to using the onion you must connect clearnet to irc.ouch.chat to register your nickserv account.

TOR use is enabled via an onion link:

cvhhtp6fyf55faza7pbmy7vp2rdqnf6s5kcxbo5d2uahsmmen5eslqyd.onion

TLS Fingerprint: A4BC80696DAC936677DE0DCEA429D3B985C8A67449C5E54EB773BE5F5FBE9ECD

Keep in mind:

• All tor connections require SASL + TLS (either use TLS Fingerprint OR no-verify)
• All tor connections MUST use the .onion url. Direct connections to the clearnet urls are not supported
• Spamming via TOR will result in a deletion of NickServ account

When connected via tor properly you will get an ouchnet/tor/user cloak

For users who wish not to clearnet connect to register we will be adding a method of contact soon

Policy subject to change and will be updated here.