4 SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
5 secure conferencing services in the Internet over insecure channel. SILC
6 superficially resembles IRC, although they are very different internally.
7 They both provide conferencing services and have almost same set of of
8 commands. Other than that, they are nothing alike. The SILC is secure and
9 the network model is entirely different compared to IRC.
11 SILC provides security services that any other conferencing protocol does
12 not offer today. The most popular conferencing service, IRC, is entirely
13 insecure. If you need secure place to talk to some people or to group of
14 people over the Internet, IRC or any other conferencing service, for that
15 matter, cannot be used. Anyone can see the messages and their contents in
16 the IRC network. And the most worse case, some people is able to change
17 the contents of the messages. Also, all the authentication data, such as,
18 passwords are sent plaintext.
20 SILC is a lot more than just about `encrypting the traffic'. That is easy
21 enough to do with IRC and SSL hybrids, but even then the entire network
22 cannot be secured, only part of it. SILC provides security services, such
23 as, sending private messages entirely secure; no one can see the message
24 except you and the real receiver of the message. SILC also provides same
25 functionality for channels; no one except those clients joined to the
26 channel may see the messages destined to the channel. Communication
27 between client and server is also secured with session keys, and all
28 commands, authentication data (such as passwords etc.) and other traffic
29 is entirely secured. The entire network, and all parts of it, is secured.
30 We are not aware of any other conferencing protocol providing same
31 features at the present time.
33 SILC has secure key exchange protocol that is used to create the session
34 keys for each connection. SILC also provides strong authentication based
35 on either passwords or public key authentication. All authentication data
36 is always encrypted in the SILC network. All connections has their own
37 session keys, all channels has channel specific keys, and all private
38 messages can be secured with private message specific keys.
45 The SILC is distributed currently as three different packages. The SILC
46 Client package, the SILC Server package and the SILC Toolkit package. Each
47 of the package has its intended audience.
49 - SILC Client package is intended for end users who seek a good and full
50 featured SILC client. The SILC Client package currently includes
51 Irssi-SILC client that supports all SILC features, themes and much more.
52 It is curses based but has a possibility of adding various other frontends
53 to it. The Irssi-SILC client's user interface is based on the Irssi client
54 (see <a href="http://irssi.org/">Irssi project</a>).
56 - SILC Server package is intended for system administrators who would like
57 to run their own SILC server or SILC router. The package includes the
58 actual server but not the client. If you are running a server and would
59 like to connect it to the silc.silcnet.org router you can contact us.
61 - SILC Toolkit package is intended for developers and programmers who
62 would like to create their own SILC based applications or help in the
63 development of the SILC protocol. The actual development of the SILC is
64 done in the Toolkit and all the other packages are based on the Toolkit
65 releases. The Toolkit includes SILC Protocol Core library, SILC Crypto
66 library, SILC Key Exchange (SKE) library, SILC Math library, SILC Modules
67 (SIM) library, SILC Utility library, SILC Client library and some other
68 libraries. It also includes the Irssi-SILC Client, another client as an
69 example how to program with the Toolkit and the SILC Server.
76 SILC is an open source (or freeware) project and it has been released
77 under the GNU General Public Licence. The SILC is free to use and
78 everyone is free to distribute and change the SILC under the terms of the
79 GNU GPL. While there is no guarantee for the product, SILC is made as
80 secure as possible. The fact that the software and the protocol
81 is open for public analysis is a good thing for end user.
83 Protocol specification of SILC protocol is available for anyone to look
84 at. There exists four Internet Drafts that has been submitted to the <a
85 href="http://www.ietf.org">IETF</a>. See <a
86 href="index.php?page=docs">documentation page</a> for more information.
91 Feedback and comments are welcome. You can reach me in the following Address.
94 priikone at silcnet.org