WeeSodium is a WeeChat script for encrypting and authenticating messages in an IRC channel with a shared key.

DO NOT (EVER) RELY ON THIS SCRIPT FOR STRONG SECURITY! I hope to better explain how WeeSodium works and the threat models it protects against soon.

Additionally, you should be aware that:

• IRC is not a secure protocol and has a number of properties that make it next to impossible to rely upon for secure messaging.
• You must still rely on TLS to protect the underlying connections between clients and the server. If you do not, you are leaking any credentials and lots and lots of metadata. (Social graph analysis anyone?)
• WeeSodium is only intended to provide a minimal level of message confidentiality from the IRC server and its operator. It is an experiment and any actual security properties are probably just incidental.
• WeeSodium only encrypts message contents. It does not support encrypting the topic or any notices sent to the channel.
• WeeSodium is not for encrypting PMs. Use OTR for this; it provides much stronger security properties and is better audited.

1. Drop weesodium.py into ~/.weechat/python/ or wherever you put your Python WeeChat scripts.
2. Run /python load weesodium.py in your WeeChat.
3. Add [weesodium] to your weechat.bar.status.items setting. If you are using the default WeeChat setting currently, you can do:

   /set weechat.bar.status.items "[time],[buffer_last_number],[buffer_plugin],buffer_number+:+buffer_name+(buffer_modes)+{buffer_nicklist_count}+buffer_zoom+buffer_filter,[weesodium],[lag],[hotlist],completion,scroll"
   

4. In the channel you want to use this with, do /weesodium enable SECRETKEY.
5. Use /weesodium disable to stop encryption in that channel.

If you want to store keys persistently so that you do not have to enter them each time you restart WeeChat, you can use WeeChat's secure storage:

1. /secure set weesodium SECRETKEY
2. /set weesodium.keys.servername.#channelname ${sec.data.weesodium}