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

Cross Posting

[jeremiahstanley]

I'm gonna be called a troll for this...

But do we really have to cross post everything that gets posted on Newsforge? It is already sydicated everywhere else (linux.com, and others I'm sure).

Use stunnel, stupid

[smnolde]

stunnel helps to encrypt normally non-encrypted data streams.

I've got my own ircd which I require the clients to use stunnel or an ssl-enabled client to connect. Soon, I can limit access purely by accepted certs, thereby keeping lusers out.

Of course the same can be done with OpenSSH. I use that at work to bypass my office firewall and use my home cable connection for a proxy to usenet, email, and other service. The best part of this is I can bypass my ofice proxy so they don't record where I netsurf. it looks a lot like a bunch of ftp and telnet to them.

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.

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:Secure talking not very common

[Shiny Metal S.]

Somehow, it is quite hard to _really_ initiate a secure communication without much work.

I won't say anything insightful here, but when I need a Secure Internet Live Conferencing(tm) to safely talk about some top secret stuff with people I work with, then we just connect to our server with ssh, run BitchX and use a local IRC daemon. Quite easy and secure for me, especially when most of the work is in shell anyway.