SILC - Secure Internet Live Conferencing
========================================
-SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
-secure conferencing services on the Internet over insecure channel.
-SILC is IRC-like software although internally they are very different.
-The biggest similarity between SILC and IRC is that they both provide
-conferencing services and that SILC has almost the same commands as IRC.
-Other than that they are nothing alike. Major differences are that SILC
-is secure what IRC is not in any way. The network model is also entirely
-different compared to IRC.
+SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a modern and secure
+conferencing protocol.
+
+
+Features
+========
+
+SILC provides all the common conferencing services like private messages,
+instant messages, channels and groups, and video and audio conferencing.
+The main difference to other protocols is that SILC has been designed with
+security as its main feature - it is not an add-on or optional plugin -
+and security cannot be turned off.
+
+All SILC connections execute SILC Key Exchange protocol, an authenticated
+Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm, to generate a shared secret session
+key. All SILC packets exchanged between SILC clients and servers are
+protected with these keys.
+
+All private messages (instant messages) are protected with private message
+keys established using the SILC Key Exchange protocol over the SILC network.
+Private messages can be read only by the sender and the recipient of the
+message. SILC servers along the way cannot decrypt the messages.
+Optionally, private message key may also be a shared secret, such as
+passphrase, or the SILC Key Exchange may be performed peer-to-peer between
+clients. If all these methods fail the session keys are used as the last
+resort fallback to encrypt private messages.
+
+All channel and group messages are protected with channel specific keys
+generated by the SILC routers and only the members of the channel may read
+the messages. Optionally, channel members may set up a shared secret,
+such as passphrase, as the channel key to exclude SILC routers from knowing
+the key.
Running SILC
This will launch the server on to the background.
-Features
-========
-
-Features to be included into the final release of SILC. [Note that the
-current Developer's Version does not include all of these features, read
-TODO file for more information.]
-
- o Normal conferencing services such as private messages, channels,
- channel messages, etc. All traffic is secured and authenticated.
-
- o No unique nicknames. There can same nicknames in SILC without
- collisions. SILC has unique Client ID's, Server ID's and Channel ID's
- to assure that there are no collisions.
-
- o Secure key exchange and authentication protocol. SILC Key Exchange
- protocol provides key material used in the SILC sessions in secure
- manner. The protocol is immune for example to man-in-the-middle
- attacks. The SILC Authentication protocol provides strong
- authentication. Authentication may be based on passphrase or public
- key (RSA) authentication. For clients there is an option not to
- use authentication when connecting to servers.
-
- o All traffic is encrypted and authenticated using the best cryptographic
- algorithms out there. Command messages, private messages and channel
- messages are all protected by encryption. User can set private keys
- for both private message and for channels so that even SILC servers do
- not know the keys. Cipher keys are, by default, 128 bits in length and
- public keys, by default, 1024 bits in length.
-
- o Supports data compression with GZIP to improve performance.
-
- o Supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 firewall traversal protocols.
-
- o SIM (SILC Module) support. Support for loading of shared objects at
- run-time that provides new and extended features to both SILC client
- and server. These can provide extra ciphers and extra features to
- the software.
-
- o SILC client can be installed and used without root privileges.
-
- o SILC client can be configured by system wide configuration files but
- with user specific configuration files as well.
-
-
History
=======
-SILC was released in the summer 2000 to the public, but the idea and the
-protocol itself is quite old. The SILC was designed by Pekka Riikonen in
-the year 1996 and first lines of codes were written in the early 1997. The
-SILC has been rewritten three times since its very first version in 1997.
-The first version included SILC client, very preliminary SILC server, RSA
-implementation and 3DES implementation. The server actually was not usable
-but the client looked pretty much the same as the first client released in
-the summer 2000. The first version had also random number generator which
-were based on the SSH's random number generator. The current RNG is based
-on the first RNG but has been rewritten twice since the first version.
-
-The development of SILC was suspended in 1997 when Pekka got busy at
-school and in work. The pause laster several months. The development
-resumed in 1998 when Juha Räsänen and Pekka implemented the ElGamal
-algorithm. However, for the same reasons as previously the development
-stopped again, and was resumed again later in 1998 by doing rewrite of
-ther SILC in C++. This was obviously a mistake but at that time it seemed
-like a good idea. Again, in the winter 1999 the development suspended when
-Pekka got busy writing his thesis and was forced to stop the development.
-
-Later, in 1999, it was decided that this time SILC will be rewritten from
-scratch in the right way. C++ was obviously a bad choice so plain C
-language was selected again. The protocol itself faced some rework by
-redesigning some core parts of the protocol. The protocol was also fully
-documented and the protocol specifications were submitted to the IETF. The
-result of this development effort is the release now in public. Since the
-release in the summer 2000 several other people have contributed to the
-project as well. And, the development continues.
+SILC was developed between 1996 and 1999 and released to public in 2000.
+SILC was originally developed by Pekka Riikonen.
Contact
FTP archive for SILC project : ftp://ftp.silcnet.org/
Development mailing list address : silc-devel@lists.silcnet.org
SILC Server : /server silc.silcnet.org
+
projects / silc.git / blobdiff