1 TODO/bugs in Irssi SILC client
2 ==============================
4 o GETKEY server will save the serverkey to the same filename as the
5 connected server and thus destroys the key.
7 o GETKEY server will show first, "there is no such nickname".
9 o Add local command to switch the channel's private key when channel has
10 several private keys. Currently sending channel messages with many
11 keys is not possible because changing the key is not possible by the
14 o JOINing to +a (requires passphrase to JOIN) does not work on autojoin.
15 Seems the passwords in the .silc/config has no effect.
17 o Add local commands to list the current server and client public keys
18 that the user has. And a local command to dump the contents of the
19 public key to the screen. Something like LISTKEYS, SHOWKEY...
21 o We should get rid of the clientconfig.[ch] in Irssi SILC and move the
22 cipher, hash, hmac and pkcs configuration to the Irssi SILC's config
25 o Add PERL scripting support from Irssi CVS.
27 o Extend the /HELP command to support sub commands or something. So
28 that user can say /help set mutual_authentication they would get
29 help of the mutual_authentication setting.
31 o Set different kind of settings, like, /set mutual_authentication,
32 /set key_exchange_timeout, /set conn_auth_timeout etc etc.
35 TODO/bugs In SILC Client Library
36 ================================
38 o The PRIVATE_MESSAGE_KEY packet is not handled (it is implemented
39 though). This should be added and perhaps new client operation
40 should be added to notify application that it was received and
41 set the key only if application wishes to set (accept the key) it.
43 o should /nick nick and /nick Nick cause the Nick to be Nick@host becase
46 o When changing own nickname and there exists a same nickname the library
47 can give the client now nickname in format nick@host. This is new
48 behaviour and maybe should be removed. The changer should always
49 get the one it wants and not have the formatted nickname.
51 o Remove the command destructor all together from the client, it is
52 not needed and its usage is buggy when the context is registered
53 to multiple pending commands.
55 o Additions to do after protocol version 1.1:
57 o Fix the NICK_CHANGE notify handling not to create new entry
58 for the changed client, but take the nickname from the notify
59 (removes need for resolving as well). Protocol TODO entry 3.
61 o Add support for list of errors in command replies. Protocol
65 TODO/bugs In SILC Server
66 ========================
68 o removing other's modes on channel seems to be possible due to some
71 o Topic notifications seem to go double times occasionally to a channel.
73 o Backup router related issues
75 o Channel user mode changes are notified unnecessarely when
76 switching to backup router on router crash.
78 o Add a timeout to handling incoming JOIN commands. It should be
79 enforced that JOIN command is executed only once in a second or two
80 seconds. Now it is possible to accept n incoming JOIN commands
81 and process them without any timeouts. THis must be employed because
82 each JOIN command will create and distribute the new channel key
83 to everybody on the channel.
85 o New configuration file format must be added. The new one will be
86 done using the dotconf config library (lib/dotconf). The following
87 tasks relates closely to this as well and must be done at the same time
88 when adding the new config file format:
90 o Server says that it is able to listen on multiple ports but
91 currently that is bogus. It can, but internals are for single
94 o Protocol execution timeouts are hard coded, should be
97 o IP address fields in configuration file should accept mask
98 format as well, IP/MASK, and not just plain IP.
100 o If client's public key is saved in the server (and doing public key
101 authentication) then the hostname and the username information could
102 be taken from the public key. Should be a configuration option!
105 TODO/bugs In SILC Libraries
106 ===========================
108 o WIN32 silc_net_create_connection_async does not work the same way
109 than on Unix. Do it with threads on WIN32. The function works but
110 is not actually async currently.
112 o Rewrite the lib/silcsim/silcsim.h. The SilcSimContext should be
113 private and silc_sim_alloc should take necessary arguments.
116 TODO in SILC Protocol
117 =====================
119 Current protocol version is 1.0. However, it is far from being perfect,
120 and needs to include additional features. Following protocol TODO entries
121 describe new stuff to be added to protocol versions 1.x.
123 1. Re-define the Status Payload: it is now 16 bits, split it into two
124 8 bits fields. First field includes status types from 0 - 9 and
125 10 - n *if* it is not an list of errors. If it is list of errors then
126 the first field includes 1, 2 and/or 3, and the second field includes
127 the error status 10 - n. This way it is possible to send multiple
128 errors (list of errors) and we have a way to tell the receiver that
129 there will be other errors as well. The second field is used only
130 if there is list of errors. If normal status, or normal (single)
131 error status the second field is set to zero, and must be ignored.
132 Hence, the status works same way as now except for list of errors.
133 To be included in protocol version 1.1.
135 2. Define that WHOIS and IDENTIFY commands must send list of errors
136 if multiple Client ID (or Channel ID and Server ID for IDENTIFY) was
137 requested and was not found. Each unfound entry must cause an error
138 command reply to the sender. Also define that errors must be sent
139 *after* sending successfully found entries (this way receiver may
140 ignore them). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
142 3. Define the NICK_CHANGE notify to send the changed nickname as a new
143 third argument. This will make the NICK_CHANGE notify handling easier
144 in the receiver's end (client primarily) since it removes the
145 requirement that receiver must resolve (using IDENTIFY or WHOIS) the
146 new Client ID received in the notify (because of the new nickname is
147 unknown). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
149 4. Add "request parameters" or similar to the WHOIS command, which can
150 be used to request various parameters (something not returned by
151 standard WHOIS command) about clients (info that could be fetched
152 even from clients). Additional specification (or appendix) should
153 be done to define the payload and the parameters. It could be used
154 to make the WHOIS command support various search conditions as well.
155 This would be the way to extend the WHOIS command to support various
156 new features without always making the command incompatible to previous
157 version. To be included in protocol version 1.1.
159 5. Inviting and banning by public key should be made possible. To be
160 included in protocol version 1.x.
162 6. Add perhaps SILENCE_USERS, SILENCE_OPERS channel user modes which
163 can be used to silence (moderate) normal users and opers (this set
164 only by founder). To be included in protocol version 1.1.
166 7. Channel Message Payload needs slight redesining to include the IV
167 field to the MAC generation of the payload. It is authenticated
168 by the packet's MAC but not by the payload's MAC. Since the IV
169 belongs to the payload, its integrity should be protected by the
170 payload MAC and not alone by packet MAC. To be included in protocol
177 A rough list of stuff that is going to be done to SILC after 1.0 or at
180 o Implement the defined SilcDH API. The definition is in
181 lib/silccrypt/silcdh.h.
183 o X.509 certificate support. SILC protocol supports certificates and
184 it would be great to have support for them. This is a big task as
185 support has to be made for ASN.1 as well. I've looked into OpenSSL
186 package as it has X.509 certificate support (and ASN.1 as well).
187 The code does not look very good to my eye but it has some potentials.
188 This should be looked at more closely.
190 Naturally own SILC Certificate API has to be defined regardles what
191 the actual X.509 library is (OpenSSL X.509 or something else). Other
192 choice is to write own X.509 library but I'm not going to do it -
193 I can help to migrate the OpenSSL X.509 into SILC and I can help if
194 someone would like to write the X.509 library - but I'm not going
195 to start writing one myself. Anyhow, the OpenSSL X.509 lib should
198 Other package that should be checked is the NSS's X509 library,
199 which I like more over OpenSSL package.
201 o SSH2 public keys support, allowing the use of SSH2 public keys in
204 o OpenPGP certificate support, allowing the use of PGP public keys
207 o Compression routines are missing. The protocol supports packet
208 compression thus it must be implemented. SILC Zip API must be
211 o Rewrite the lib/silcutil/silcprotocol.[ch] not to have [un]register
212 functions, but to make it context based all the way. The alloc should
213 take as argument the protocol type and its callback (not only
214 final callback). It is not good that we have now global list of
215 registered protocols.
217 o Optimizations in Libraries
219 o There is currently three (3) allocations per packet in the
220 silc_packet_receive_process, which is used to process and
221 dispatch all packets in the packet queue to the parser callback
222 function. First allocation is for parse_ctx, second for the
223 SilcPacketContext, and third for packet->buffer where the actual
226 The parse_ctx allocation can be removed by adding it as a
227 structure to the SilcPacketContext. When the SilcPacketContext
228 is allocated there is space for the parse context already.
230 The silc_packet_context_alloc could have a free list of
231 packet contexts. If free packet context is found from the list
232 it is returned instead of allocating a new one. The library
233 could at first allocate them and save them to the free list
234 until enough contexts for smooth processing exists in the list.
235 This would remove a big allocation since the structure is
236 quite big, and even bigger if it would include the parse_ctx.
238 The packet->buffer can be optimized too if the SilcBuffer
239 interface would support free lists as well. Maybe such could
240 be done in the same way as for SilcPacketContext. The
241 silc_buffer_alloc would check free list before actually
242 allocating new memory. Since the packets in the SILC protocol
243 usually are about the same size (due to padding) it would be
244 easy to find suitable size buffer from the free list very
247 These naturally cause the overal memory consumption to grow
248 but would take away many allocations that can be done several
251 o Move the actual file descriptor task callback (the callback that
252 handles the incoming data, outgoing data etc, that is implemnted
253 in server and client separately (silc_server_packet_process and
254 silc_client_packet_proces)) to the low level socket connection
255 handling routines, and create an interface where the application
256 can register a callbacks for incoming data, outoing data and EOF
257 receiving, which the library will call when necessary. This way
258 we can move the data handling in one place.
260 o Add silc_id_str2id to accept the destination buffer as argument
261 and thus not require any memory allocation. Same will happen
262 with silc_id_payload_* functions.
264 o Optimizations in Server
266 o Remove the big switch statement from the function
267 silc_server_packet_parse_type and replace it with predefined
268 table of function pointers where each of the slot in table
269 represents the packet type value.
271 Same could be done with notify packets which has big switch
272 statement too. Same kind of table of notify callbacks could be
275 o The parser callback in the server will add a timeout task for
276 all packets. It will require registering and allocating a
277 new task to the SilcSchedule. Maybe, at least, for server
278 and router packets the parser would be called immediately
279 instead of adding it to the scheduler with 0 timeout. It
280 should be analyzed too how slow the task registering process
281 actually is, and find out ways to optimize it.
283 o Cipher optimizations (asm, that this) at least for i386 would be nice.
285 o Add builtin SOCKS and HTTP Proxy support, well the SOCKS at least.
286 SILC currently supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 but it needs to be compiled