+++ /dev/null
-<b>Frequently Asked Questions</b><br /><br />
-<font size="2">
-<a href="#f1_0">1. General Questions</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_1">1.1 What is SILC?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_20">1.2 When was SILC Project started?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_30">1.3 Why SILC in the first place?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_40">1.4 What license covers the SILC release?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_50">1.5 Why SILC? Why not IRC3?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_55">1.6 What platforms SILC supports?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_60">1.7 Where can I find more information?</a><br />
- <a href="#f1_70">1.8 I would like to help out, what can I do?</a><br />
-<br />
-<a href="#f2_0">2. Protocol Questions</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_10">2.1 What is the status of SILC protocol in the IETF?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_20">2.2 How much the SILC protocol is based on IRC?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_30">2.3 Why use SILC? Why not IRC with SSL?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_40">2.4 Can I talk from SILC network to IRC network?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_45">2.5 Does SILC support file transfer?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_47">2.6 I am behind a firewall, can I use SILC?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_50">2.7 How secure SILC really is?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_60">2.8 Does SILC support instant messaging?</a><br />
- <a href="#f2_80">2.9 I have suggestions to SILC Protocol, what can I do?</a><br />
-<br />
-<a href="#f3_0">3. Client Questions</a><br />
- <a href="#f3_10">3.1 Where can I find SILC clients?</a><br />
- <a href="#f3_20">3.2 Can I use SILC with IRC client and vice versa?</a><br />
-<br />
-<a href="#f4_0">4. Server Questions</a><br />
- <a href="#f4_10">4.1 Where can I find SILC servers?</a><br />
- <a href="#f4_20">4.2 Can I run own SILC server?</a><br />
- <a href="#f4_30">4.3 What is the difference between SILC server and SILC router?</a><br />
-<br />
-<a href="#f5_0">5. Toolkit Questions</a><br />
- <a href="#f5_10">5.1 What is SILC Toolkit?</a><br />
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_0"></a>
-<b>1. General Questions</b><br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_10"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: What is SILC?</font><br />
-A: SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
-secure conferencing services in the Internet over insecure channel. SILC
-is IRC like although internally they are very different. Biggest
-similarity 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.
-<br /><br />
-Biggest differences are that SILC is secure what IRC is not in any way.
-The network model is also entirely different compared to IRC.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_20"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: When was SILC Project started?</font><br />
-A: The SILC development started in 1996 and early 1997. But, for various
-reasons it suspended many times until it finally got some wind under its
-wings in 1999. First public release was in summer 2000.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_30"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Why SILC in the first place?</font><br />
-A: Simply for fun, nothing more. And actually for need back in the days
-when it was started. When SILC was first developed there really did not
-exist anything like this. SILC has been very interesting and educational
-project.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_40"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: What license covers the SILC release?</font><br />
-A: The SILC software developed here at silcnet.org, the SILC Client, the
-SILC Server and the SILC Toolkit are covered by the GNU General Public
-License.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_50"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Why SILC? Why not IRC3?</font><br />
-A: Question that is justified no doubt of that. SILC was not started to
-become a replacement for IRC. SILC was something that didn't exist in 1996
-or even today except that SILC is now released. However, I did check out
-the IRC3 project in 1997 when I started coding and planning the SILC protocol.
-<br /><br />
-But, IRC3 is problematic. Why? Because it still doesn't exist. The
-project is almost at the same spot where it was in 1997 when I checked it
-out. And it was old project back then as well. That's the problem of IRC3
-project. The same almost happened to SILC as well as I wasn't making real
-progress over the years. I talked to the original author of IRC, Jarkko
-Oikarinen, in 1997 and he directed me to the IRC3 project, although he
-said that IRC3 is a lot of talking and not that much of anything else. I
-am not trying to put down the IRC3 project but its problem is that no one
-in the project is able to make a decision what is the best way to go about
-making the IRC3 and I wasn't going to be part of that. The fact is that
-if I would've gone to IRC3 project, nor IRC3 or SILC would exist today. I
-think IRC3 could be something really great if they just would get their
-act together and start coding the thing.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_55"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: What platforms SILC supports?</font><br />
-A: The SILC Client is available on various Unix systems and is reported to
-work under cygwin on Windows. The SILC Server also works on various Unix
-systems. However, the server has not been tested under cygwin as far as we
-know. The SILC Toolkit is distributed for all platforms, Unix, Cygwin
-and native Windows.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_60"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Where can I find more information?</font><br />
-A: For more technical information we suggest reading the SILC Protocol
-specifications. You might also want to take a look at the <a
-href="?page=docs">documentation </a> page on the web page.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f1_70"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: I would like to help out, what can I do?</font><br />
-A: You might want to take a look at the <a
-href="?page=contribute">Contributing</a> page and the <a
-href="?page=todo">TODO</a> list. You might also want to join the
-SILC development mailing list.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_0"></a>
-<b>2. Protocol Questions</b><br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_10"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: What is the status of SILC protocol in the IETF?</font><br />
-A: The SILC protocol specifications has been submitted currently as
-individual submissions. There does not currently exist a working group
-for this sort of project. Our goal is to fully standardize the SILC and
-thus submit it as RFC to the <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> at a
-later time.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_20"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: How much SILC Protocol is based on IRC?</font><br />
-A: SILC is not based on IRC. The client superficially resembles IRC
-client but everything that happens under the hood is nothing alike IRC.
-SILC could *never* support IRC because the entire network toppology is
-different (hopefully more scalable and powerful). So no, SILC protocol
-(client or server) is not based on IRC. Instead, We've taken good things
-from IRC and left all the bad things behind and not even tried to burden
-the SILC with the IRCs problems that will burden IRC and future IRC
-projects till the end. SILC client resembles IRC client because it is
-easier for new users to start using SILC when they already know all the
-commands.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_30"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Why use SILC? Why not IRC with SSL?</font><br />
-A: Sure, that is possible, although, does that secure the entire IRC
-network? And does that increase or decrease the lags and splits in the
-IRC network? Does that provide user based security where some specific
-private message are secured? Does that provide security where some
-specific channel messages are secured? And I know, you can answer yes to
-some of these questions. But, security is not just about applying
-encryption to traffic and SILC is not just about `encrypting the
-traffic`. You cannot make insecure protocol suddenly secure just by
-encrypting the traffic. SILC is not meant to be IRC replacement. IRC is
-good for some things, SILC is good for same and some other things.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_40"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Can I talk from SILC network to IRC network?</font><br />
-A: Simple answer for this is No. The protocols are not compatible which
-makes it impossible to directly talk from SILC network to IRC network or
-vice versa. Developing a gateway between these two networks would
-technically be possible but from security point of view strongly not
-recommended. We have no plans for developing such a gateway.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_45"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Does SILC support file transfer?</font><br />
-A: Not yet. This is a feature that will be added to the SILC protocol.
-The exact file transfer protocol is undefined.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_47"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: I am behind a firewall, can I use SILC?</font><br />
-A: Yes. If your network administrator can open the port 706 (TCP) you can
-use SILC without problems. You may also compile your SILC client with
-SOCKS support which will proxy your SILC session through the firewall.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_50"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: How secure SILC really is?</font><br />
-A: A good question which I don't have an answer for. We have tried to make
-SILC as secure as possible. However, there is no security protocol or
-security software that has not been vulnerable to some sort of attacks.
-SILC is in no means different from this. So, it is suspected that there
-are security holes in the SILC. These holes just need to be found so
-that they can be fixed.
-<br /><br />
-But to give you some parameters of security SILC uses the most secure
-crytographic algorithms such as AES(Rijndael), Twofish, Blowfish, RC5,
-etc. SILC does not have DES or 3DES as DES is insecure and 3DES is just
-too slow. SILC also uses cryptographically strong random number generator
-when it needs random numbers. Public key cryptography uses RSA (PKCS #1)
-and Diffie-Hellman algorithms. Key lengths for ciphers are initially set
-to 256. For public key algorithms the starting key length is 1024 bits.
-<br /><br />
-But the best answer for this question is that SILC is as secure as its
-weakest link. SILC is open and the protocol is open and in public thus
-open for security analysis.
-<br /><br />
-To give a list of attacks that are ineffective against SILC:
-<br /><br />
-- Man-in-the-middle attacks are ineffective if proper public key
-infrastructure is used. SILC is vulnerable to this attack if the public
-keys used in the SILC are not verified to be trusted (as any other
-protocol for that matter).<br />
- - IP spoofing is ineffective (because of encryption and trusted keys).<br />
- - Attacks that change the contents of the data or add extra data to the
-packets are ineffective (because of encryption and integrity checks).<br />
- - Passive attacks (listenning network traffic) are ineffective (because
-of encryption). Everything is encrypted including authentication data
-such as passwords when they are needed.<br />
- - Any sort of cryptanalytic attacks are tried to make ineffective by
-using the best cryptographic algorithms out there.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_60"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Does SILC support instant messaing?</font><br />
-A: SILC is not an instant message (IM) system, like ICQ and the others.
-SILC is more IRC like system, "real-time" chat and that kind of
-stuff.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f2_80"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: I have suggestions to SILC Protocol,
-what can I do?</font><br />
-A: All suggestions and improvements are of course welcome. You should read
-the protocol specifications first to check out whether your idea is
-covered by them already. The best place to make your idea public is the
-SILC development mailing list.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f3_0"></a>
-<b>3. Client Questions</b><br /><br />
-
-<a name="f3_10"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Where can I find SILC clients?</font><br />
-A: The SILC client is available for free download from the silcnet.org web
-page. Some people have also mentioned words Java and Perl when talking
-about SILC clients. Nothing has appeared yet, though.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f3_20"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Can I use SILC with IRC client and vice versa?</font><br />
-A: Generally the answer would be no for both. However, there exist already
-at least one IRC client that supports SILC, the <a
-href="http://irssi.org/">Irssi client</a>. The current SILC client is
-actually based on the user interface of the Irssi client. So, yes it is
-possible to use SILC with some IRC clients and vice versa. But, this
-does not mean that you can talk from SILC network to IRC network, that is
-not possible.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f4_0"></a>
-<b>4. Server Questions</b><br /><br />
-
-<a name="f4_10"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Where can I find SILC servers?</font><br />
-A: The SILC server is available for free download from the silcnet.org
-web page. We are not aware of any other SILC server implementations, so far.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f4_20"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: Can I run own SILC server?</font><br />
-A: Yes of course. Download the SILC server package, compile and install
-it. Be sure to check out the installation instructions and the README
-file. You also should decide whether you want to run SILC server or SILC
-router.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f4_30"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: What is the difference between SILC
-server and SILC router?</font><br />
-A: The topology of the SILC network includes SILC routers and the SILC
-servers (and SILC clients of course). Normal SILC server does not have
-direct connections with other SILC servers. They connect directly to the
-SILC router. SILC Routers may have several server connections and they
-may connect to several SILC routers. The SILC routers are the servers in
-the network that know everything about everything. The SILC servers know
-only local information and query global information from the router when
-necessary.
-<br /><br />
-If you are running SILC server you want to run it as router only if you
-want to have server connections in it and are prepared to accept server
-connections. You also need to get the router connected to some other
-router to be able to join the SILC network. You may run the server as
-normal SILC server if you do not want to accept other server connections
-or cannot run it as router.
-<br /><br />
-
-<a name="f5_0"></a>
-<b>5. Toolkit Questions</b><br /><br />
-
-<a name="f5_10"></a>
-<font color="#2f486f">Q: What is SILC Toolkit?</font><br />
-A: SILC Toolkit is a package intended for software developers who would
-like to develope their own SILC based applications or help in the
-development of the SILC. The Toolkit includes SILC Protocol Core library,
-SILC Crypto library, SILC Key Exchange (SKE) library, SILC Math
-library, SILC Modules (SIM) library, SILC Utility library, SILC Client
-library and few other libraries.
-</font>
projects / silc.git / blobdiff