Thank you for responding. For now, please unblock outgoing connections on port 6667 to the following addresses: irc.freenode.net irc.oftc.net irc.mozilla.org In the future, I plan to make several suggestions about how Information Security could substantially improve JHU's and JHMI's security posture. They would make it much safer to open up outgoing connections on port 6667 to more addresses. I would be happy to discuss this issue further. Thanks.