Forums Bug Reports mIRC connects to non-SSL server with SSL sometimes

Under certain conditions, when you click Connect in the Connect dialog box, mIRC will attempt to connect to an IRC server that doesn't support SSL using SSL, which obviously will fail. It also ends up trying the wrong port.

These are the steps I can reproduce this 100% of the time:

1. Create an entry in the Servers dialog for a non-SSL server, such as what I use, irc.speedrunslive.com port 6667.
2. Create another entry in the Servers dialog, but this time for an SSL-supporting server, such as what I use, irc.teksavvy.ca port +6697 (note + sign).
3. Exit mIRC.
4. Start mIRC.
5. Using the Servers then Connect dialog, connect to the SSL server (irc.teksavvy.com +6697).
6. After it logs in, spawn a second mIRC process, such as by middle-clicking the mIRC taskbar icon if on Windows 7/8/8.1/10.
7. Select and connect to the non-SSL server (irc.speedrunslive.com 6667) using the Servers and Connect dialog boxes.

The second copy of mIRC will attempt to connect to the non-SSL server using SSL incorrectly, even though 6667 is specified in the server configuration.

The /server command seems unaffected by this bug.

Thanks for your bug report. Unfortunately I have not been able to reproduce this issue so far. I followed the steps you provided and mIRC connected to the correct port each time. Can you post the exact contents of your servers.ini file? That might help track down the issue. Also, can you confirm that you are using mIRC v7.43?

Yes, it is 7.43 that this has been occurring on.

Do you know how could I send you the servers.ini file without compromising my login passwords to servers?

You can either delete the passwords for each server through the mIRC Options/IRC/Servers dialog and then paste the contents of the servers.ini file into a reply post.

Alternatively, you can install a clean copy of mIRC using the "portable" option in the installer into your Windows documents folder. Delete the servers.ini file. Run mIRC from there and add the two servers without passwords and see if you can reproduce the issue. If you can, copy the contents of that servers.ini into a reply post.

I finally got around to doing this. The following should trigger the bug. As always, use caution when getting .ini settings from people, due to security concerns.

https://mega.nz/#!4BxnSQra!I6Hac-Rxt_Z31nEUOPsEZoTb12YfSeWd2En7fdTsJHM

Thanks for the feedback. I was able to reproduce this. mIRC is actually doing this intentionally. When a status window is set to use SSL, mIRC will try to maintain its SSL state to prevent you from connecting non-securely by mistake.

If a server group name is defined, mIRC will maintain the status window SSL state as connection attempts cycle through servers in that group.

If a server group name is not defined and you switch to another server also without a group name, mIRC errs on the side of caution and assumes that they are on the same network and will maintain the SSL state for that status window.

If you select a server with a different group name to the current one, mIRC assumes that as you are connecting to a different network, switching to a non-SSL server is allowed.

So the solution in this case is to set different group names for the servers. Once you do that, mIRC will see that you are connecting to a different network and will allow the SSL state to change.

That said, none of this is intuitive. mIRC is basically intentionally ignoring your Options/Connect/Server selection for security reasons. It should probably display a warning dialog asking you to confirm the SSL state change - however, for consistency this might then be necessary with /server as well, which would block scripts, and in the connect menu selection.