1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
5 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
6 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
9 o JOINing to +a (requires passphrase to JOIN) does not work on autojoin.
10 Seems the passwords in the .silc/config has no effect.
12 o Add local commands to list the current server and client public keys
13 that the user has. And a local command to dump the contents of the
14 public key to the screen. Something like LISTKEYS, SHOWKEY...
16 o We should get rid of the clientconfig.[ch] in Irssi SILC and move the
17 cipher, hash, hmac and pkcs configuration to the Irssi SILC's config
20 o Add PERL scripting support from Irssi CVS.
22 o Extend the /HELP command to support sub commands or something. So
23 that user can say /help set mutual_authentication they would get
24 help of the mutual_authentication setting.
26 o Set different kind of settings, like, /set mutual_authentication,
27 /set key_exchange_timeout, /set conn_auth_timeout etc etc.
30 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
31 ================================
33 o Rewrite the channel's user list thingy and cross list it to the
36 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
37 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
38 should be added to notify application that it was received and
39 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
41 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
43 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
44 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
45 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
47 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
51 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
52 ========================
54 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
55 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
56 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
57 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
59 o Make the normal server save user counts with LIST command reply.
61 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
62 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
63 something that should have not been sent).
65 o Add hashed passwords to silcd.conf file.
67 o Backup router related issues
69 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
70 switching to backup router on router crash.
72 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
73 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
74 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
75 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
76 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
77 to everybody on the channel.
79 o New configuration file format must be added. The following
80 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
81 when adding the new config file format:
83 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
84 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
87 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
90 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
91 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
93 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
95 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
96 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
97 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
100 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
101 ===========================
103 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
104 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
105 is not actually async currently.
107 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
108 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
111 TODO in SILC Protocol
112 =====================
114 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
115 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
116 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
118 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
119 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
120 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
121 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
122 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
123 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
124 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
125 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
126 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
127 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
128 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
130 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
131 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
132 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
133 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
134 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
135 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
137 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
138 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
139 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
140 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
141 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
142 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
144 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
145 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
146 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
147 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
148 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
149 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
150 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
151 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
152 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
154 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
155 included in protocol version 1.x.
157 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
158 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
159 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
161 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
162 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
163 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
164 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
165 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
168 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
169 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
170 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
171 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
172 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
173 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
175 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
176 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
177 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
178 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
181 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
182 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
183 included in protocol version 1.1.
189 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
192 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
193 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
195 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
196 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
197 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
198 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
199 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
200 This should be looked at more closely.
202 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
203 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
204 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
205 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
206 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
207 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
210 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
211 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
213 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
216 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
219 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
220 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
223 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
224 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
225 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
226 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
227 registered protocols.
229 o Optimizations in Libraries
231 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
232 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
233 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
234 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
235 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
238 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
239 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
240 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
242 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
243 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
244 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
245 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
246 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
247 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
248 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
250 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
251 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
252 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
253 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
254 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
255 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
256 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
259 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
260 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
263 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
264 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
265 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
266 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
267 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
268 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
269 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
270 we can move the data handling in one place.
272 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
273 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
274 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
276 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
277 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
278 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
279 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
280 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
281 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
282 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
284 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
287 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
290 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
292 o Optimizations in Server
294 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
295 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
296 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
297 represents the packet type value.
299 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
300 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
303 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
304 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
305 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
306 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
307 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
308 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
309 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
311 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
312 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
313 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
314 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
315 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
316 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
318 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
319 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
321 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
323 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
324 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled