LiberaChat Cloaks

The cloaking method on LiberaChat works a bit different than other networks. This article will explain how they work.

Types of Cloak

There are 2 types of cloak that a user can possibly obtain but each one is obtained differently. These are as follows:

User and Project Cloaks

Project cloaks are offered to users that are part of one of the projects on the LiberaChat network. These typically take the form project/role/user, for instance 'bnc4free/someuser' (though some take other forms). They are designed to demonstrate that the user is connected to a project in some way. Different projects use cloaks for various roles and some are offered to users of a project as-well.

Normal user cloaks which can be requested from #libera-cloak take the form user/accountname. They indicate that the user is not affiliated with any specific project on LiberaChat. Bots can also be cloaked subject to approval from operators on the network.

Gateway Cloaks

Gateway cloaks are cloaks that are put on a the user if they are connecting from larger organisations and webchats, such as Mibbit, KiwiIRC and many bouncer providers. These hosts tend to take the form of 'gateway/shell/providername/x-*' or gateway/web/provider/ip.1.2.3.4'

The Cloak Hierarchy

Gateway cloaks are applied when you connect to the network from a larger organisation, webchat and bouncer providers such as ourselves. However, you may already have a user or project cloak assigned to your nickname. LiberaChat interprets this as follows:

• User Cloaks: If you have a user cloak (user/accountname), this will not work and you will be assigned the gateway cloak
• Project Cloaks: If you have a project cloak (project/role/user), this will be applied when you authenticate to NickServ or use SASL and will over-ride the gateway cloak

LiberaChat's services also take this into account and therefore the same principal can be applied to ChanServ flags and akicks.