Secure Internet Live Conferencing

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Newsforge has an article about new generation secure chat protocol called SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing). The article features the protocol and its features like secure file transfer. Interesting article and very interesting protocol." We posted a story about SILC last year; looks like they've come a long way since then.

Comments

I've used this, it is excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great to see this get some coverage. I'e used this in the past, and it is excellent.

The best I can say for encryption over IM's is the blaim plugin for GAIM. The only problem being that both sides must be using gaim + blaim.

Jabber has got signatures/encryption as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Jabber is an openly-developed, XML-based messaging platform. As anyone might expect, it has built-in security features, from SSL server connections, to PGP signatures/encryption. A number of clients is available for various platforms.

Re:Sounds cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Trillian. It is a chat client that is compatible with 5 different instant messaging protocols plus it has encrypted messages when IMing other people with the same client.

Re:Use stunnel, stupid

[BigJim.fr]

You are merely protecting the path between your workstation and the server through which you access the IRC network of your choice. Don't forget that IRC is a network, and that that it's distributed nature puts the security of your communications beyond your own control. Tunneling will not change much to IRC security. What would noticeably increase privacy would be encrypted discussions between client side scripts communicating through DCC. It would add a layer and would use the IRC server as a directory and session initiation environment.

Re:Use stunnel, stupid

[acidblood]

You don't get the point.

You can't simply fix a broken protocol by tunneling it over a secure connection. IRC wasn't made with security in mind, and it shows. Stunnel is no more than a temporary and very dirty hack, until something better shows up. That might be SILC, or this project I've started along with a few other IRC addicts: CIRCUS.

Then there's other fixes regarding network scalibility, for instance. And don't forget the boom of IM in the last few years, which has shown quite a few features which IRC is lacking, and an updated protocol might take a shot at improving user experience, going way beyond what IRC can offer.