SILC - Secure Internet Live Conferencing
========================================

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
============

After installing the SILC to the system the SILC client is started by
giving command:

	silc

If you want to run with specific configuration file give -f option.

To run the server you should configure the server first.  To run the
server give the command:

	silcd

This will launch the server on to the background.


History
=======

SILC was developed between 1996 and 1999 and released to public in 2000.
SILC was originally developed by Pekka Riikonen.


Contact
=======

Feedback and comments are welcome.  Bug reports should be sent to the
development mailing list.

Official SILC project web site      : http://silcnet.org/
FTP archive for SILC project        : ftp://ftp.silcnet.org/
Development mailing list address    : silc-devel@lists.silcnet.org
SILC Server                         : /server silc.silcnet.org

