Your mIRC client must be able to support SSL. To determine whether or not your copy
can support SSL, on your keyboard, press Shift and F1 or click "Help" then "Search".

Click the "Find" tab. In the "Type the word(s) you want to find" box, type SSL. If
your client supports SSL, you should see in box number 3 the following: "Connect
Options" and "SSL". If you do not see those or anything pertaining to SSL then you
need a higher version. If your client does support SSL, you will need to download
and install OpenSSL. This is available via
http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html

Once you download OpenSSL, install it. No system restart is required. Next, you will
need to download these two DLLs. libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll. These are available at:

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?libeay32

and

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?ssleay32

These two files needs to be extracted in C:\mIRC and in C:\Windows\System

Once you have extracted these files, you must close your mIRC client and restart it.
Use the following syntax to connect via SSL:

/server irc.exilenet.org +7000