1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
5 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
6 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
9 o JOINing to +a (requires passphrase to JOIN) does not work on autojoin.
10 Seems the passwords in the .silc/config has no effect.
12 o Add local commands to list the current server and client public keys
13 that the user has. And a local command to dump the contents of the
14 public key to the screen. Something like LISTKEYS, SHOWKEY...
16 o We should get rid of the clientconfig.[ch] in Irssi SILC and move the
17 cipher, hash, hmac and pkcs configuration to the Irssi SILC's config
20 o Add PERL scripting support from Irssi CVS.
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 Make the normal server save user counts with LIST command reply.
53 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
54 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
55 something that should have not been sent).
57 o Add hashed passwords to silcd.conf file.
59 o Backup router related issues
61 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
62 switching to backup router on router crash.
64 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
65 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
66 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
67 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
68 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
69 to everybody on the channel.
71 o New configuration file format must be added. The new one will be
72 done using the dotconf config library (lib/dotconf). The following
73 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
74 when adding the new config file format:
76 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
77 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
80 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
83 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
84 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
86 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
88 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
89 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
90 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
93 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
94 ===========================
96 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
97 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
98 is not actually async currently.
100 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
101 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
104 TODO in SILC Protocol
105 =====================
107 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
108 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
109 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
111 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
112 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
113 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
114 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
115 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
116 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
117 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
118 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
119 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
120 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
121 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
123 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
124 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
125 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
126 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
127 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
128 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
130 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
131 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
132 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
133 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
134 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
135 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
137 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
138 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
139 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
140 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
141 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
142 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
143 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
144 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
145 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
147 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
148 included in protocol version 1.x.
150 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
151 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
152 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
154 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
155 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
156 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
157 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
158 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
161 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
162 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
163 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
164 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
165 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
166 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
168 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
169 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
170 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
171 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
174 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
175 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
176 included in protocol version 1.1.
182 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
185 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
186 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
188 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
189 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
190 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
191 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
192 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
193 This should be looked at more closely.
195 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
196 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
197 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
198 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
199 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
200 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
203 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
204 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
206 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
209 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
212 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
213 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
216 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
217 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
218 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
219 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
220 registered protocols.
222 o Optimizations in Libraries
224 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
225 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
226 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
227 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
228 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
231 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
232 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
233 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
235 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
236 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
237 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
238 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
239 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
240 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
241 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
243 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
244 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
245 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
246 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
247 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
248 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
249 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
252 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
253 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
256 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
257 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
258 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
259 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
260 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
261 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
262 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
263 we can move the data handling in one place.
265 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
266 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
267 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
269 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
270 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
271 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
272 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
273 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
274 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
275 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
277 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
280 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
283 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
285 o Optimizations in Server
287 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
288 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
289 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
290 represents the packet type value.
292 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
293 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
296 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
297 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
298 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
299 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
300 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
301 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
302 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
304 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
305 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
306 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
307 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
308 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
309 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
311 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library.
313 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
315 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
316 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled