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.
24 o Add boolean (or bool), typedef of unsigned char.
26 o More platform supports should be added. The code is pretty much
27 generic but there are some parts that require porting (SIM). Also,
28 some support for different platforms is needed into configure.in.
30 o SILC requires currently GCC to work because we use GCC specific
31 compilation options. Generally any compiler that supports inline
32 functions and can build shared libraries (for SIMs) should work.
33 These cases should be included into configure.in.
35 o Extended SIM (SILC Module) support. Currently only SILC Cipher API
36 and SILC Hash API may be used as SIM's. What I have in mind is to
37 have extended support for SIM's so that basically any SILC API could
38 be used as SIM's. This would open tremendous possiblities but
39 opens also issues on security that needs to be dealt with.
41 Some sort of SIM compilation environment should be defined so that
42 the SIM's could use SILC specific symbols from the modules (which they
43 cannot do currently). In the future modules could add new features
44 to SILC easily with this support. I'm more thinking this from client's
45 perspective to add new features to client (such as IRC support as SIM)
46 but server should have the support as well. Anyhow, this is an
47 interesting feature...
49 This maybe post 1.0 task - dunno.
51 o SIM support for other platforms than just for Linux. Apache has
52 example code (code that we could use directly pretty easily) for
55 TODO In SILC Client Library
56 ===========================
58 o Non-blocking connection on the background must be stopped if some
59 other connection on same window has established. Now it is possible
60 that some non-blocking connection timeouts on the background when
61 we already have a working connection to some other place; things
64 o Input line on UI is buggy. Cursor movement etc bugs. Too lazy to
67 o Logic for handling multiple same nicknames for example in private
68 message sending. I guess the logic is done in server side but is
71 o Private message key setting is missing and must be implemented.
72 Currently private messages are encrypted with session keys. This
73 is required by the protocol.
75 o Channel private key setting is missing and must be implemented.
76 Currently there cannot be private keys for channels. Normal channel
77 keys (generated by server) are used. This is required by the protocol.
79 o I guess, public key authentication (when connecting to a server)
80 is not working currently. It is just matter of loading the keys
81 from file and using them (see corresponding code in server, it should
82 support public key authentication already).
84 o Connection Authentication request resolving is missing and must be
85 done. This is required by the protocol.
87 o Move ssh_client_notify_by_server to its own file (like notify.[ch]).
89 o Key Exchange protocol's responder side is missing from client.
90 Generally it is possible for the client to be responder so it should
91 be implemented (See corresponding code from server). Error handling
92 in the KE protocol is also in pretty bad shape in client.
98 o DNS/IP lookup blocks the server. This must be fixed. Check the
99 resolver stuff (resolver(3), resolver(5)). Either we have to do the
100 own resolver stuff (through scheduler, if possible without writing
101 too much own stuff) or use threads.
103 o Length of the packet processing timeouts needs to be checked whether
104 they are too short or too long. I haven't really tested whether they
105 are suitable. They should be tested on high load which I haven't done
108 o INVITE command must set the channel's invite list if channel is
111 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but currently
112 that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single server.
114 o Command flag usage in general is not implemented yet.
116 o Client history must be implemented. Protocol says that server must
117 keep history information about clients for some period of time.
119 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be configurable.
121 o serverconfig.c and the function naming in it is inconsistent. It is
122 not silc_config_server* it should be silc_server_config*. As should
123 all the SilcConfigServer* types be SilcServerConfig*.
125 o Implement DENY_CONNECTION section in serverconfig.c and in server.
127 o Implement REDIRECT_CLIENT section in serverconfig.c and in server.
129 o Configuration file format - could be better.
131 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask format
132 as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
134 o Connection classes should be actually implemented in serverconfig.c.
135 They can be defined but they are totally ignored currently.
137 o Acceptance of incoming connections (client and server connections)
138 should be checked before key exchange protocol. Currently it is
139 checked at the authentication phase after KE, that is ok, but it should
140 be checked before starting KE, as well.
142 o Statistics are totally missing from the server. It would be nice
143 to gather some statistics.
146 TODO In SILC Libraries
147 ======================
149 o Implement PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) flag in SKE (and in client and
150 server, actually). If PFS is set, re-key must cause new key exchange.
151 This is required by the SILC protocol.
153 o silc_id_str2id must also take ID length as argument. Otherwise, variable
154 length ID's (after we add IPv6) will not work.
156 o Re-key in general is actually missing (from everywhere) and must be done.
158 o ID Cache expiry does not work.
160 o PKCS#1 style RSA public key encryption/decryption/sign/verify is
161 missing, and should be added for interoperability reasons. The thing
162 I've done now is bad and should be removed as soon as possible (or
163 the protocol should then state the method of how they should be done).
165 o Scheduler needs to be analyzed on high load as it might be unfair
166 towards select() because it may run timeout tasks before select() and
167 after select(). If it is found to be unfair the timeout task running
168 before select() should probably be removed.
170 o On select() issue; maybe we should use poll() instead if it is
171 available? poll() doesn't have max fd limit...
173 o SIM support for SILC PKCS API needs to made so that they could be
174 used as SIM's. At the same time some work is required on prime
175 generation as the way it is done now sucks. Read from code for
178 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
179 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Comp API must be
180 defined. zlib package is already included into the lib dir (in CVS,
181 not in distribution), but it is not used yet, and it requires some
182 tweaking on the Makefiles (we want static lib not shared).
184 o Cipher API needs to be made more consistent. Some parts of the
185 code generated with current Cipher API looks really bad. Same
186 is with PKCS API, even worse actually. They need to be made
187 cleaner. Introducing silc_cipher_encrypt/decrypt/set_key etc.
188 functions (I actually don't understand why have I left these un-done).
190 o Random Number Generator needs some tweaking. Reading /dev/random may
191 block resulting slow initialization of RNG. Some other things in the
192 RNG may block as well. Also, I have some pending changes to the RNG
193 that needs to be commited (from Schneier's Yarrow-160 paper). They
194 should make the RNG even better.
196 o silc_buffer_[un]format() needs to be made more stable as it may
197 crash the SILC if malformed data is sent as argument. There are a
198 lot of places in client and server where we trust directly data coming
199 from network and try to unformat it. The unformatting routine needs
200 to be able handle situations where data sent is malformed, by mistake
201 or intentionally. This is important as it is easy to crash the SILC
202 now by just sending malformed data. Also, in client and server we
203 must start checking the return value from silc_buffer_[un]format.
209 o Write manuals for server.
211 o Write manuals for client.
213 o Write SILC Library Reference manual. This would include all the SILC
214 API's with simple examples how the functions are to be used. This is
215 pretty easy to create by taking all the functions plus their comments
216 from source/header files. However, same sort of reference manual
217 should be written for client and server as well.
223 o Pthreads support. A lot of problems are solved with server (and with
224 client as well) if we add pthread support. We can forget things such
225 as non-blocking connecting etc, and we can do things such as DNS/IP
226 lookups async. The server itself also benefits great deal from
227 threads, especially from performance point of view.
229 But, this is not a small task and almost entire SILC Library has to
230 be made re-entrant. Own API is probably added for the threads support
231 to make changes in the future as painless as possible. So the API
232 would have things like silc_mutex_lock, silc_mutex_unlock and
235 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
236 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
237 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
238 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
239 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
240 This should be looked at more closely.
242 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
243 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
244 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
245 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
246 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
247 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
250 o SSH2 public keys support. Maybe - not really needed but could be
251 nice as SSH is widely used all over the place. SILC Protocol
252 supports SSH2 public keys.
254 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.