1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o /cumode for unknown nick does not give any error message.
6 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
7 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
8 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
11 o JOINing to +a (requires passphrase to JOIN) does not work on autojoin.
12 Seems the passwords in the .silc/config has no effect.
14 o Add local commands to list the current server and client public keys
15 that the user has. And a local command to dump the contents of the
16 public key to the screen. Something like LISTKEYS, SHOWKEY...
18 o We should get rid of the clientconfig.[ch] in Irssi SILC and move the
19 cipher, hash, hmac and pkcs configuration to the Irssi SILC's config
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 The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
34 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
35 should be added to notify application that it was received and
36 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
38 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
40 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
41 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
42 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
44 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
48 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
49 ========================
51 o Assure that server is allowed to connect only once to router. Meaning
52 if server connection is established already, same connection cannot be
55 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
56 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
57 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
58 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
60 o Make the normal server save user counts with LIST command reply.
62 o Add hashed passwords to silcd.conf file.
64 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
65 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
66 something that should have not been sent).
68 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
69 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
70 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
71 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
72 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
73 to everybody on the channel.
75 o Backup router related issues
77 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
78 switching to backup router on router crash.
80 o New configuration file format must be added. The following
81 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
82 when adding the new config file format:
84 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
85 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
88 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
91 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
92 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
94 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
96 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
97 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
98 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
101 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
102 ===========================
104 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
105 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
106 is not actually async currently.
108 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
109 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
111 o lib/silcsftp/sftp_fs_memory.c use directly open(), close() etc.
112 routines. Change to use silc_file_* routines.
115 TODO in SILC Protocol
116 =====================
118 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
119 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
120 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
122 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
123 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
124 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
125 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
126 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
127 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
128 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
129 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
130 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
131 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
132 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
134 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
135 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
136 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
137 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
138 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
139 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
141 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
142 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
143 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
144 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
145 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
146 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
148 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
149 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
150 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
151 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
152 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
153 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
154 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
155 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
156 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
158 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
159 included in protocol version 1.x.
161 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
162 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
163 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
165 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
166 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
167 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
168 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
169 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
172 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
173 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
174 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
175 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
176 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
177 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
179 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
180 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
181 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
182 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
185 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
186 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
187 included in protocol version 1.1.
193 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
196 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
197 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
199 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
200 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
201 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
202 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
203 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
204 This should be looked at more closely.
206 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
207 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
208 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
209 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
210 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
211 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
214 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
215 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
217 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
220 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
223 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
224 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
227 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
228 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
229 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
230 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
231 registered protocols.
233 o Optimizations in Libraries
235 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
236 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
237 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
238 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
239 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
242 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
243 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
244 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
246 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
247 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
248 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
249 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
250 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
251 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
252 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
254 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
255 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
256 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
257 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
258 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
259 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
260 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
263 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
264 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
267 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
268 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
269 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
270 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
271 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
272 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
273 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
274 we can move the data handling in one place.
276 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
277 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
278 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
280 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
281 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
282 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
283 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
284 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
285 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
286 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
288 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
291 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
294 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
296 o Optimizations in Server
298 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
299 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
300 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
301 represents the packet type value.
303 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
304 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
307 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
308 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
309 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
310 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
311 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
312 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
313 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
315 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
316 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
317 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
318 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
319 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
320 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
322 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
323 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
327 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
329 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
330 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled