SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing)

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INTRODUCTION
Chat protocols are very popular on the Internet. They have actually
been very popular since the very first chat protocols appeared on the net. The
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was one of the first chat protocols, and quickly
gained the status of being the most popular chat on the net. Today, IRC has
several competitors from various other so called Instant Messaging (IM)
protocols, such as ICQ. However, all of these different chat protocols have
something in common; they are all insecure. The security is important
feature in applications and protocols in contemporary network environment.
The older chat protocols, however have failed to meet the growing security
requirements on the Internet. It is not anymore enough to just provide services,
like for example chat services. Now, they need to be secure services.
The Secure Internet Live Conferencing (SILC) protocol is a new
generation chat protocol which provides full featured conferencing services,
just like any other contemporary chat protocol provides. In addition, it
provides security by encrypting and authenticating the messages in the
network. The security has been the primary goal of the SILC protocol and the
protocol has been designed from the day one security in mind. All packets and
messages travelling in the SILC Network are always encrypted and
authenticated. The network topology is also different from for example IRC
network. The SILC network topology attempts to be more powerful and
scalable than the IRC network. The basic purpose of the SILC protocol is to
provide secure conferencing services. The SILC Protocol have been
developed as Open Source project. The protocol specifications are freely
available and they have been submitted to the IETF. The very first
implementations of the protocol are also already available.
SILC
ABOUT SILC
SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
secure conferencing services on the Internet over insecure channel. SILC
superficially resembles IRC, although they are very different internally. They
both provide conferencing services and have almost the same set of
commands. Other than that, they are nothing alike. The SILC is secure and the
network model is entirely different compared to IRC.
SILC provides security services that any other conferencing protocol
does not offer today. The most popular conferencing service, IRC, is entirely
insecure. If you need secure place to talk to some person or to group of people
over the Internet, IRC or any other conferencing service, for that matter,
cannot be used. Anyone can see the messages and their contents in the IRC
network. And the most worse case, some is able to change the contents of the
messages. Also, all the authentication data, such as, passwords are sent
plaintext in IRC.
SILC is much more than just about `encrypting the traffic'. That is easy
enough to do with IRC and SSL hybrids, but even then the entire network
cannot be secured, only part of it. SILC provides security services, such as
sending private messages entirely secure; no one can see the message except
you and the real receiver of the message. SILC also provides same
functionality for channels; no one except those clients joined to the channel
may see the messages destined to the channel. Communication between client
and server is also secured with session keys and all commands, authentication
data (such as passwords etc.) and other traffic is entirely secured. The entire
network, and all parts of it, is secured. We are not aware of any other
conferencing protocol providing same features at the present time.
SILC
SILC has secure key exchange protocol that is used to create the
session keys for each connection. SILC also provides strong authentication
based on either passwords or public key authentication. All authentication data
is always encrypted in the SILC network. Each connection has their own
session keys, all channels have channel specific keys, and all private messages
can be secured with private message specific keys.
Distribution
The SILC is distributed currently in three different packages. The SILC
Client package, the SILC Server package and the SILC Toolkit package. Each
package has its intended audience.