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16 Features to be included into the final release of SILC.
19 <li>Normal conferencing services such as private messages, channels,
20 channel messages, etc. All traffic is secured and authenticated.
22 <li>No unique nicknames. There can be same nicknames in SILC without
23 collisions. SILC has unique Client ID's, Server ID's and Channel ID's
24 to assure that there are no collisions. The maximum length of the
25 nickname is 128 characters. The maximum length of the channel name
28 <li>Channels can have channel operators and a channel founder which is the
29 client who created the channel. Channel founder privileges supersedes
30 the channel operator privileges. Also, channel founder privileges
31 may be regained even if the founder leaves the channel. The
32 requirement for this is that the client is connected to the same
33 server it was originally connected. The channel founder cannot
34 be removed from the channel by force.
36 <li>Channel messages are protected by channel key, generated by the
37 server. The key is re-generated once in an hour. It is
38 possible to set a private key for the channel so that even the
39 servers does not know the key. Actually, it is possible to set
40 several private keys so that only specific users on the channel may
41 decrypt some specific messages. Adding the private key significantly
42 increases the security as nobody else but the users on the channel
45 <li>Private messages are protected using the session keys, generated
46 when connecting to the server. This means that the private messages
47 are decrypted and re-encrypted enroute to the true receiver of the
48 message. However, it is possible to set a private key between two
49 clients and protect the private messages with that key. In this case
50 no server enroute can decrypt the message since they don't have
51 the key. The SILC protocol provides an automatic key negotiation
52 between two clients using the SKE protocol. This makes it very
53 easy to negotiate a shared secret key with another client in the
56 <li>All the other traffic, like commands between client and the server
57 are protected using the session keys. Session keys are re-generated
58 once in an hour. The re-key may be done with or without the PFS
59 (Perfect Forward Secrecy).
61 <li>Secure key exchange and authentication protocol. SILC Key Exchange
62 (SKE) protocol provides key material used in the SILC sessions in
63 secure manner. The protocol is immune for example to man-in-the-middle
64 attacks and is based on the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm. The
65 SILC Authentication protocol provides strong
66 authentication. Authentication may be based on passphrase or public
67 key (RSA) authentication. For clients there is an option not to
68 use authentication when connecting to servers.
70 <li>All traffic is encrypted and authenticated using the best cryptographic
71 algorithms out there. Cipher keys are, by default, 256 bits in length and
72 public keys, by default, 1024 bits in length.
74 <li>Supports the following ciphers: AES, Twofish, Blowfish, Mars,
75 Cast-256, RC5 and RC6. Supports the following hash functions: MD5 and
76 SHA1. Supports the PKCS #1 (RSA) for public key cryptography.
78 <li>Supports data compression with GZIP to improve performance.
80 <li>SIM (SILC Module) support. Support for loading of shared objects at
81 run-time that provides new and extended features to both SILC client
82 and server. These can provide extra ciphers and extra features to
85 <li>SILC client can be installed and used without root privileges.
87 <li>SILC client can be configured by system wide configuration files but
88 with user specific configuration files as well.