UnrealIRCd 4.0.8(.4) released

News about the UnrealIRCd project, including release announcements
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Syzop
UnrealIRCd head coder
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UnrealIRCd 4.0.8(.4) released

Post by Syzop »

UnrealIRCd 4.0.8 enables several hardening options by default on *NIX to make several type of exploits more difficult and in some cases impossible. On Windows releases are now signed by default.

UPDATE: There have been a number of point releases to fix possible compile problems. If you already successfully installed UnrealIRCd then there is no need to upgrade. The Windows version is unchanged (4.0.8).

Improvements:
  • *NIX: As part of defense-in-depth UnrealIRCd now compiles with several hardening options by default. This makes several type of exploits more difficult and in some cases even impossible. Tech: this enables full RELRO (GOT and PLT being read-only), everything compiled as PIE making ASLR possible, stack protector canaries are added, etc.
  • Windows: releases are now signed. If you download the UnrealIRCd installer you will no longer see "Unknown publisher" but rather "Open Source Developer, Bram Matthys". Similarly all the EXE and DLL module files have been signed which should make it easy for anti virus software to see if something is an official UnrealIRCd release file or not.
Major issues fixed
  • Possible crash if you have several blacklist blocks
Minor issues fixed
  • User mode +d (deaf) did not work
Other changes:
  • We've always printed big warnings when running UnrealIRCd as root. In this version we still do, but in future versions we will simply refuse to boot. https://www.unrealircd.org/docs/Do_not_run_as_root
  • System c-ares is preferred over our own shipped c-ares
  • System cURL is preferred over ~/curl (if it has AsynchDNS)
  • Our shipped libraries are no longer built as static
  • Now that shipped libraries are dynamic they need to be installed somewhere (if used). The default location is ~/unrealircd/lib and can be changed via --with-privatelibdir. (Although, if you are a package builder then you will probably use --with-system-xxx and then private libraries are not used at all)
As always, you can download UnrealIRCd from www.unrealircd.org.
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