How to connect to a secure MUD using MUSHclient

See the SSL/TLS Support forum posting for an easier and more up-to-date method of connecting via SSL using the Tor Browser.

This page describes using MUSHclient to connect to a MUD that uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) by using "stunnel" to establish a secure connection.

The advantage of this is that what you type cannot be read by "packet sniffers" on the local network, or indeed anywhere on the Internet between your PC and the MUD.

Be warned however that the encrypted text is decrypted at the MUD itself, so conceivably what you type could be monitored by admins or other people on the MUD.

Step 1 - Make a suitable directory

I found it easiest to put stunnel.exe, the required DLLs and the configuration file in the same directory. I suggest "c:\stunnel" but that is up to you. Create that directory ready for downloading the files into.

Step 2 - Obtain stunnel program

Go to Stunnel.org, click on the Downloads tab and then "Get the Windows Binaries". This link should take you there: http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html .
Download the latest stable version, currently this is file: stunnel-4.05.exe
You might want to rename stunnel-4.05.exe as stunnel.exe to save typing later on

Step 3 - Obtain OpenSSL DLLs

Stunnel requires the OpenSSL DLLs to work. You can currently find them at http://www.stunnel.org/download/stunnel/win32/openssl-0.9.6l/. Download the file openssl.zip. (That is a lower-case "L" at the end of the URL, not the number "1").
Unzip the files in it (libssl32.dll, libeay32.dll and openssl.exe) into your c:\stunnel directory.
If you can't find those files, or want more information, visit the OpenSSL web site.

Step 4 - Create a configuration file

The stunnel.conf configuration file describes which connections are to be tunnelled, from which port, to which site.

Just use a text editor (eg. Notepad) to set up this file. Put it into the same directory (c:\stunnel).

The first two lines define that you are running the client side, and a name of the file to log connections to.

After that you need a section per MUD you want to connect to.

The "connect" line is where the MUD is, and which port is uses for SSL connections.
The "accept" line defines where it accepts the local connection from.

Type "stunnel -help" for more configuration options.

Example stunnel.conf file:


client = yes
output = logfile.txt

[mymuck]
connect = mymuck.mymucksdomain.com:8989
accept = localhost:5555

[mysecond]
connect = othermuck.com:4205
accept = localhost:5556

Step 5 - start stunnel

Once everything is set up, type "stunnel-4.05" at the command prompt, or just double-click the file stunnel-4.05.exe in the Explorer window. This should read the configuration file and go into the background to process connections. You can set it up as a service under NT, or put an alias to it in your startup directory to have it run automatically.

Step 6 - connect to your MUD!

Once all this is done (it sounds a lot, but only has to be done once), you can connect to the MUD by simply connecting to the appropriate port in MUSHclient.

For example, to connect to "mymuck.mymucksdomain.com:8989" in the earlier example file, simply connect MUSHclient to "IP address = localhost, port = 5555".

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Gedrean for researching this process. See forum posting FuzzBall 6 feature support: SSL and MCP

Stunnel is released under the GNU General Public License.