4 This is more or less complete list of tasks that has to be done before
5 SILC 1.0 could ever be released. It is clear that the list does not
6 include all the bugs that exists. At the end of list are tasks that
7 needs to be done but are probably post 1.0.
9 Feel free to contribute if you have the ability and free time - all the
10 help is really appreciated - and needed.
18 o We should replace all short, int, long, unsigned short, unsigned int,
19 unsigned long with some pre-defined datatypes that really are what
20 we want on all platforms. int16, uint16, int32, uint32 etc. are
21 what we could use or maybe SilcInt16, SilcUInt16 etc. Also, boolean
22 datatype should be defined.
25 TODO In SILC Client Library
26 ===========================
28 o TODO in commands (lib/silcclient/command.c and
29 silc/silclient/command_reply.c):
31 o RESTART command is not implemented
33 o Client library crashes if for example server timeouts protocol
34 execution and disconnects the client. The client, on the other hand
35 may still assume that the connection is active, even after receiving
36 the EOF. Reason for this is that the clien library does not handle
37 the SilcSocketConnection reference counter at all. This must be
40 o Logic for handling multiple same nicknames for example in private
41 message sending. I guess the logic is done in server side but is
44 o I guess, public key authentication (when connecting to a server)
45 is not working currently. It is just matter of loading the keys
46 from file and using them (see corresponding code in server, it should
47 support public key authentication already).
49 o Non-blocking connection on the background must be stopped if some
50 other connection on same window has established. Now it is possible
51 that some non-blocking connection timeouts on the background when
52 we already have a working connection to some other place; things
55 o Add client library parameters or options that handle what kind of
56 messages the library should print out (using `say' client operation,
57 for example) and what is left for the application to print. The
58 appliation could for example set that it handles all command printing
59 but all error printing should be handled by the library, etc...
60 This is not a showstopper.
62 o Input line on UI is buggy. Cursor movement etc bugs. Too lazy to
69 o TODO in commands (command.c and command_reply.c):
71 o RESTART is not implemented
72 o In servers all command reply funtions should still call the
73 pending command reply even if the reply was error. In client
74 it is not called but in server, I think, it must be called.
75 When implementing this check that all commands handle the
76 situation correctly when it is called as pending command
77 (it should most likely check that cmd->pending == TRUE/FALSE).
78 o WHOIS and IDENTIFY command reply sending is buggy because
79 it may put status to be SILC_STATUS_LIST_START even though
80 there is only one valid entry (thus should be SILC_STATUS_OK).
81 This happens because it does not check the data.registered == FALSE
82 clients before setting the status. Good fix for this would be
83 to make sure that the clients table does not include any
84 unregistered clients in the first place.
86 o TODO in notify types (packet_receive.c):
88 o SERVER_SIGNOFF notify type is not implemented
90 o Packet processing can be made faster. All packet function in the
91 packet_receive.c has same prototypes. Instead of calling those from
92 huge switch() make a table of callback functions that can be called
93 directly by the packet type.
95 o DNS/IP lookup blocks the server. This must be fixed. Check the
96 resolver stuff (resolver(3), resolver(5)). Either we have to do the
97 own resolver stuff (through scheduler, if possible without writing
98 too much own stuff) or use threads.
100 o Acceptance of incoming connections (client and server connections)
101 should be checked before key exchange protocol. Currently it is
102 checked at the authentication phase after KE, that is ok, but it should
103 be checked before starting KE, as well.
105 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but currently
106 that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single server.
108 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be configurable.
110 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask format
111 as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
113 o Connection classes should be actually implemented in serverconfig.c.
114 They can be defined but they are totally ignored currently.
117 TODO In SILC Libraries
118 ======================
120 o Implement PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) flag in SKE (and in client and
121 server, actually). If PFS is set, re-key must cause new key exchange.
122 This is required by the SILC protocol.
124 o Re-key in general is actually missing (from everywhere) and must be done.
126 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
127 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Comp API must be
128 defined. zlib package is already included into the lib dir (in CVS,
129 not in distribution), but it is not used yet, and it requires some
130 tweaking on the Makefiles (we want static lib not shared).
132 o Rewrite the task system. I made it too complex and too "neat" and
133 it really should be rewritten. We don't need priorities really, one
134 priority is enough. This will simplify a lot the task system.
136 o SIM support for SILC PKCS API needs to made so that they could be
137 used as SIM's. At the same time some work is required on prime
138 generation as the way it is done now sucks. Read from code for
141 o Random Number Generator needs some tweaking. Reading /dev/random may
142 block resulting slow initialization of RNG. Some other things in the
143 RNG may block as well. Also, I have some pending changes to the RNG
144 that needs to be commited (from Schneier's Yarrow-160 paper). They
145 should make the RNG even better.
147 o Scheduler needs to be analyzed on high load as it might be unfair
148 towards select() because it may run timeout tasks before select() and
149 after select(). If it is found to be unfair the timeout task running
150 before select() should probably be removed.
153 TODO in the protocol before SILC 0.x
154 ====================================
156 o New commands and features in the commands
157 (draft-riikonen-silc-spec-xx.txt):
159 o Define GETKEY command to fetch the public key of a server
160 and/or a client in the SILC Network.
161 o Define SENDKEY command to send your public key to a client
162 in the network. Sending to the server must not be done due
163 to various security reasons (the server must not trust the
164 public keys blindly without third party verification; that's
165 why SENDKEY is not for servers).
166 o Define AWAY command to set the indication flag whether the
167 client is present or not. Do not save the away message to the
169 o Define the channel founder property to be permanent locally in
170 the server so that channel founder can regain its rights even
171 if it disconnects from the server. Thus, define a new command
172 or channel user mode that can be used to set the channel founder
173 passphrase or public key that can be used in the authentication
174 when regaining the founder rights.
176 o New packets and features in the packets
177 (draft-riikonen-silc-pp-xx.txt):
179 o Define the Private Message packet to include private message
180 flags and define the flags. The flags could indicate whether
181 the message is, for example autoreply or the receiver should not
182 reply to the private messages. What other flags?
183 o Define the Channel Message packet to include channel message
184 flags and define the flags. Actually the flags should be same
185 as for the private message flags. This way we can implement
186 for example the CTCP style ACTION (/ME command) messages.
188 o New features in the KE/auth protocol
189 (draft-riikonen-silc-ke-auth-xx.txt):
191 o Define group exchange support for the SKE so that the SKE
192 could be performed among more than two entities. This is not
193 a showstopper and may be defined later.
199 o Pthreads support. A lot of problems are solved with server (and with
200 client as well) if we add pthread support. We can forget things such
201 as non-blocking connecting etc, and we can do things such as DNS/IP
202 lookups async. The server itself also benefits great deal from
203 threads, especially from performance point of view.
205 But, this is not a small task and almost entire SILC Library has to
206 be made re-entrant. Own API is probably added for the threads support
207 to make changes in the future as painless as possible. So the API
208 would have things like silc_mutex_lock, silc_mutex_unlock and
211 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
212 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
213 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
214 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
215 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
216 This should be looked at more closely.
218 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
219 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
220 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
221 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
222 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
223 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
226 o SSH2 public keys support. Maybe - not really needed but could be
227 nice as SSH is widely used all over the place. SILC Protocol
228 supports SSH2 public keys.
230 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.