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 Extend the /HELP command to support sub commands or something. So
19 that user can say /help set mutual_authentication they would get
20 help of the mutual_authentication setting.
23 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
24 ================================
26 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
27 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
28 should be added to notify application that it was received and
29 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
31 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
33 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
34 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
35 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
37 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
41 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
42 ========================
44 o Assure that server is allowed to connect only once to router. Meaning
45 if server connection is established already, same connection cannot be
48 o If server send CUMODE_CHANGE notify (like setting founder) to router
49 and router does not have founder on channel (founder is left or there's
50 no founder on channel at all), the router will accept the server's
51 founder mode change, even though it perhaps should not do that.
53 o Make the normal server save user counts with LIST command reply.
55 o Add hashed passwords to silcd.conf file.
57 o The router should check for validity of received notify packets from
58 servers (after all buggy servers may send notify that is actually
59 something that should have not been sent).
61 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
62 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
63 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
64 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
65 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
66 to everybody on the channel.
68 o Backup router related issues
70 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
71 switching to backup router on router crash.
73 o New configuration file format must be added. The following
74 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
75 when adding the new config file format:
77 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
78 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
81 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
84 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
85 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
87 o Lots of statistics updating is missing around the server.
89 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
90 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
91 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
94 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
95 ===========================
97 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
98 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
99 is not actually async currently.
101 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
102 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
104 o lib/silcsftp/sftp_fs_memory.c use directly open(), close() etc.
105 routines. Change to use silc_file_* routines.
108 TODO in SILC Protocol
109 =====================
111 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
112 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
113 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
115 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
116 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
117 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
118 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
119 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
120 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
121 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
122 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
123 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
124 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
125 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
127 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
128 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
129 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
130 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
131 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
132 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
134 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
135 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
136 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
137 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
138 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
139 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
141 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
142 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
143 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
144 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
145 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
146 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
147 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
148 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
149 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
151 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
152 included in protocol version 1.x.
154 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
155 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
156 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
158 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
159 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
160 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
161 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
162 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
165 8. Remove the administrative commands from the protocol all together.
166 It does not make sense for the protocol to define how a server is
167 reconnected or shutdown, since they are implementation and
168 configuration issues. Besides protocol provides only limited set of
169 administrative commands and cannot define all that one could imagine.
170 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
172 9. Add SILC_MESAGE_FLAG_REPLY for being other side to the
173 SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_REQUEST. Add generic SILC_MESSAGE_FLAG_DATA, which
174 can include generic payload, which can include generic data. The
175 payload definition is left out for now. To be included in protocol
178 10. Check command reply error status types in various commands,
179 specifically NO_FOPRIV is missing from many commands. To be
180 included in protocol version 1.1.
186 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
189 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
190 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
192 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
193 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
194 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
195 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
196 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
197 This should be looked at more closely.
199 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
200 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
201 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
202 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
203 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
204 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
207 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
208 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
210 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
213 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
216 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
217 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
220 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
221 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
222 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
223 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
224 registered protocols.
226 o Optimizations in Libraries
228 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
229 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
230 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
231 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
232 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
235 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
236 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
237 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
239 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
240 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
241 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
242 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
243 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
244 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
245 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
247 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
248 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
249 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
250 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
251 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
252 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
253 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
256 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
257 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
260 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
261 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
262 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
263 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
264 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
265 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
266 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
267 we can move the data handling in one place.
269 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
270 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
271 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
273 o Remove the `truelen' field from SilcBuffer as it is entirely
274 redundant since we can get the true length of the buffer by
275 doing buffer->end - buffer->header. Add SILC_BUFFER_TRUELEN
276 macro instead. Consider also removing `len' field too since
277 it effectively is buffer->tail - buffer->data, and adding
278 SILC_BUFFER_LEN macro can do the same. These would save
279 totally 8 bytes of memory per buffer.
281 Add also perhaps function silc_buffer_alloc_size that would
284 return silc_buffer_pull_tail(silc_buffer_alloc(size),
287 to not require the user to give the pull_tail anymore.
289 o Optimizations in Server
291 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
292 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
293 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
294 represents the packet type value.
296 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
297 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
300 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
301 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
302 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
303 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
304 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
305 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
306 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
308 o The SERVER_SIGNOFF notify handing is not optimal, because it'll
309 cause sending of multiple SIGNOFF notify's instead of the one
310 SERVER_SIGNOFF notify that the server received. This should be
311 optimized so that the only SERVER_SIGNOFF is sent and not
312 SIGNOFF of notify at all (using SIGNOFF takes the idea about
313 SERVER_SIGNOFF away entirely).
315 o Add SilcAsyncOperation to utility library. Any function that takes
316 callback as an argument must return SilcAsyncOperation.
320 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
322 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
323 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled