SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
secure conferencing services in the Internet over insecure channel.
SILC is IRC like software although internally they are very different.
Biggest similiarity between SILC and IRC is that they both provide
conferencing services and that SILC has almost same commands as IRC. Other
than that they are nothing alike. Biggest differences are that SILC is
secure what IRC is not in any way. The network model is also entirely
different compared to IRC.
SILC provides security services that any other conferencing protocol
does not offer today. The most popular conferencing service, IRC,
is entirely insecure. If you need secure place to talk to some people
or to group of people over the Internet, IRC or any other conferencing
service, for that matter, cannot be used. Anyone can see the messages
and their contents in the IRC network. And the most worse case, some
people is able to change the contents of the messages. Also, all the
authentication data, such as, passwords are sent plaintext.
SILC is a lot more than just about `encrypting the traffic'. That is
easy enough to do with IRC, SSL and some ad hoc scripts, and even then
the entire network cannot be secured, only part of it. SILC provides
security services, such as, sending private messages entirely secure; no
one can see the message except you and the real receiver of the message.
SILC also provides same functionality for channels; no one except those
clients joined to the channel may see the messages destined to the
channel. Communication between client and server is also secured with
session keys, and all commands, authentication data (such as passwords etc.)
and other traffic is entirely secured. The entire network, and all parts
of it, is secured. This is something that cannot be done currently with
any other conferencing protocol, even when using the ad hoc scripts. :)
SILC has secure key exchange protocol that is used to create the session
keys for each connection. SILC also provides strong authentication based
on either passwords or public key authentication. All authentication
data is always encrypted in the SILC network. All connections has their
own session keys, all channels has channel specific keys, and all private
messages can be secured with private message specific keys.
SILC is an open source (or freeware) project and it has been released
under the GNU General Public Licence. The SILC is free to use and everyone
is free to distribute and change the SILC under the terms of the GNU GPL.
While there is no guarantee for the product SILC has been tried make
as secure as possible. The fact that the software and the protocol is
open for public analysis is a good thing for end user.
Protocol specification of SILC protocol is available for
anyone to look at. There exists three Internet Drafts that has been
submitted to IETF.
See documentation page for more information.
Feedback and comments are welcome. You can reach me in the following
Address.
[Note that generally bug reports should not be sent just yet as the
Developer's Version is full of them and the bug hunt has not even started
yet.]
Pekka Riikonen
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