5 - IMPORTANT: the default keyexchange mode 'ike' is changing with release 4.5
6 from 'ikev1' to 'ikev2', thus commemorating the five year anniversary of the
7 IKEv2 RFC 4706 and its mature successor RFC 5996. The time has definitively
8 come for IKEv1 to go into retirement and to cede its place to the much more
9 robust, powerful and versatile IKEv2 protocol!
11 - Added new ctr, ccm and gcm plugins providing Counter, Counter with CBC-MAC
12 and Galois/Counter Modes based on existing CBC implementations. These
13 new plugins bring support for AES and Camellia Counter and CCM algorithms
14 and the AES GCM algorithms for use in IKEv2.
16 - The new pkcs11 plugin brings full Smartcard support to the IKEv2 daemon and
17 the pki utility using one or more PKCS#11 libraries. It currently supports
18 RSA private and public key operations and loads X.509 certificates from
21 - Implemented a general purpose TLS stack based on crypto and credential
22 primitives of libstrongswan. libtls supports TLS versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2,
23 ECDHE-ECDSA/RSA, DHE-RSA and RSA key exchange algorithms and RSA/ECDSA based
24 client authentication.
26 - Based on libtls, the eap-tls plugin brings certificate based EAP
27 authentication for client and server. It is compatible to Windows 7 IKEv2
28 Smartcard authentication and the OpenSSL based FreeRADIUS EAP-TLS backend.
30 - Implemented the TNCCS 1.1 Trusted Network Connect protocol using the
31 libtnc library on the strongSwan client and server side via the tnccs_11
32 plugin and optionally connecting to a TNC@FHH-enhanced FreeRADIUS AAA server.
33 Depending on the resulting TNC Recommendation, strongSwan clients are granted
34 access to a network behind a strongSwan gateway (allow), are put into a
35 remediation zone (isolate) or are blocked (none), respectively. Any number
36 of Integrity Measurement Collector/Verifier pairs can be attached
37 via the tnc-imc and tnc-imv charon plugins.
39 - Fixed a bug not releasing a virtual IP address to a pool if the XAUTH
40 identity was different from the IKE identity.
42 - Added man page for strongswan.conf
48 - Support of xfrm marks in IPsec SAs and IPsec policies introduced
49 with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel. For details see the example scenarios
50 ikev2/nat-two-rw-mark, ikev2/rw-nat-mark-in-out and ikev2/net2net-psk-dscp.
52 - The PLUTO_MARK_IN and PLUTO_ESP_ENC environment variables can be used
53 in a user-specific updown script to set marks on inbound ESP or
56 - The openssl plugin now supports X.509 certificate and CRL functions.
58 - OCSP/CRL checking in IKEv2 has been moved to the revocation plugin, enabled
59 by default. Plase update manual load directives in strongswan.conf.
61 - RFC3779 ipAddrBlock constraint checking has been moved to the addrblock
62 plugin, disabled by default. Enable it and update manual load directives
63 in strongswan.conf, if required.
65 - The pki utility supports CRL generation using the --signcrl command.
67 - The ipsec pki --self, --issue and --req commands now support output in
68 PEM format using the --outform pem option.
70 - The major refactoring of the IKEv1 Mode Config functionality now allows
71 the transport and handling of any Mode Config attribute.
73 - The RADIUS proxy plugin eap-radius now supports multiple servers. Configured
74 servers are chosen randomly, with the option to prefer a specific server.
75 Non-responding servers are degraded by the selection process.
77 - The ipsec pool tool manages arbitrary configuration attributes stored
78 in an SQL database. ipsec pool --help gives the details.
80 - The new eap-simaka-sql plugin acts as a backend for EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA,
81 reading triplets/quintuplets from an SQL database.
83 - The High Availability plugin now supports a HA enabled in-memory address
84 pool and Node reintegration without IKE_SA rekeying. The latter allows
85 clients without IKE_SA rekeying support to keep connected during
86 reintegration. Additionally, many other issues have been fixed in the ha
89 - Fixed a potential remote code execution vulnerability resulting from
90 the misuse of snprintf(). The vulnerability is exploitable by
91 unauthenticated users.
97 - The IKEv2 High Availability plugin has been integrated. It provides
98 load sharing and failover capabilities in a cluster of currently two nodes,
99 based on an extend ClusterIP kernel module. More information is available at
100 http://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/HighAvailability.
101 The development of the High Availability functionality was sponsored by
102 secunet Security Networks AG.
104 - Added IKEv1 and IKEv2 configuration support for the AES-GMAC
105 authentication-only ESP cipher. Our aes_gmac kernel patch or a Linux
106 2.6.34 kernel is required to make AES-GMAC available via the XFRM
109 - Added support for Diffie-Hellman groups 22, 23 and 24 to the gmp, gcrypt
110 and openssl plugins, usable by both pluto and charon. The new proposal
111 keywords are modp1024s160, modp2048s224 and modp2048s256. Thanks to Joy Latten
112 from IBM for his contribution.
114 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon supports RAM-based virtual IP pools using
115 the rightsourceip directive with a subnet from which addresses
118 - The ipsec pki --gen and --pub commands now allow the output of
119 private and public keys in PEM format using the --outform pem
122 - The new DHCP plugin queries virtual IP addresses for clients from a DHCP
123 server using broadcasts, or a defined server using the
124 charon.plugins.dhcp.server strongswan.conf option. DNS/WINS server information
125 is additionally served to clients if the DHCP server provides such
126 information. The plugin is used in ipsec.conf configurations having
127 rightsourceip set to %dhcp.
129 - A new plugin called farp fakes ARP responses for virtual IP addresses
130 handed out to clients from the IKEv2 daemon charon. The plugin lets a
131 road-warrior act as a client on the local LAN if it uses a virtual IP
132 from the responders subnet, e.g. acquired using the DHCP plugin.
134 - The existing IKEv2 socket implementations have been migrated to the
135 socket-default and the socket-raw plugins. The new socket-dynamic plugin
136 binds sockets dynamically to ports configured via the left-/rightikeport
137 ipsec.conf connection parameters.
139 - The android charon plugin stores received DNS server information as "net.dns"
140 system properties, as used by the Android platform.
146 - The IKEv2 daemon supports RFC 3779 IP address block constraints
147 carried as a critical X.509v3 extension in the peer certificate.
149 - The ipsec pool --add|del dns|nbns command manages DNS and NBNS name
150 server entries that are sent via the IKEv1 Mode Config or IKEv2
151 Configuration Payload to remote clients.
153 - The Camellia cipher can be used as an IKEv1 encryption algorithm.
155 - The IKEv1 and IKEV2 daemons now check certificate path length constraints.
157 - The new ipsec.conf conn option "inactivity" closes a CHILD_SA if no traffic
158 was sent or received within the given interval. To close the complete IKE_SA
159 if its only CHILD_SA was inactive, set the global strongswan.conf option
160 "charon.inactivity_close_ike" to yes.
162 - More detailed IKEv2 EAP payload information in debug output
164 - IKEv2 EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA share joint libsimaka library
166 - Added required userland changes for proper SHA256 and SHA384/512 in ESP that
167 will be introduced with Linux 2.6.33. The "sha256"/"sha2_256" keyword now
168 configures the kernel with 128 bit truncation, not the non-standard 96
169 bit truncation used by previous releases. To use the old 96 bit truncation
170 scheme, the new "sha256_96" proposal keyword has been introduced.
172 - Fixed IPComp in tunnel mode, stripping out the duplicated outer header. This
173 change makes IPcomp tunnel mode connections incompatible with previous
174 releases; disable compression on such tunnels.
176 - Fixed BEET mode connections on recent kernels by installing SAs with
177 appropriate traffic selectors, based on a patch by Michael Rossberg.
179 - Using extensions (such as BEET mode) and crypto algorithms (such as twofish,
180 serpent, sha256_96) allocated in the private use space now require that we
181 know its meaning, i.e. we are talking to strongSwan. Use the new
182 "charon.send_vendor_id" option in strongswan.conf to let the remote peer know
185 - Experimental support for draft-eronen-ipsec-ikev2-eap-auth, where the
186 responder omits public key authentication in favor of a mutual authentication
187 method. To enable EAP-only authentication, set rightauth=eap on the responder
188 to rely only on the MSK constructed AUTH payload. This not-yet standardized
189 extension requires the strongSwan vendor ID introduced above.
191 - The IKEv1 daemon ignores the Juniper SRX notification type 40001, thus
192 allowing interoperability.
198 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon can now use SQL-based address pools to deal out
199 virtual IP addresses as a Mode Config server. The pool capability has been
200 migrated from charon's sql plugin to a new attr-sql plugin which is loaded
201 by libstrongswan and which can be used by both daemons either with a SQLite
202 or MySQL database and the corresponding plugin.
204 - Plugin names have been streamlined: EAP plugins now have a dash after eap
205 (e.g. eap-sim), as it is used with the --enable-eap-sim ./configure option.
206 Plugin configuration sections in strongswan.conf now use the same name as the
207 plugin itself (i.e. with a dash). Make sure to update "load" directives and
208 the affected plugin sections in existing strongswan.conf files.
210 - The private/public key parsing and encoding has been split up into
211 separate pkcs1, pgp, pem and dnskey plugins. The public key implementation
212 plugins gmp, gcrypt and openssl can all make use of them.
214 - The EAP-AKA plugin can use different backends for USIM/quintuplet
215 calculations, very similar to the EAP-SIM plugin. The existing 3GPP2 software
216 implementation has been migrated to a separate plugin.
218 - The IKEv2 daemon charon gained basic PGP support. It can use locally installed
219 peer certificates and can issue signatures based on RSA private keys.
221 - The new 'ipsec pki' tool provides a set of commands to maintain a public
222 key infrastructure. It currently supports operations to create RSA and ECDSA
223 private/public keys, calculate fingerprints and issue or verify certificates.
225 - Charon uses a monotonic time source for statistics and job queueing, behaving
226 correctly if the system time changes (e.g. when using NTP).
228 - In addition to time based rekeying, charon supports IPsec SA lifetimes based
229 on processed volume or number of packets. They new ipsec.conf paramaters
230 'lifetime' (an alias to 'keylife'), 'lifebytes' and 'lifepackets' handle
231 SA timeouts, while the parameters 'margintime' (an alias to rekeymargin),
232 'marginbytes' and 'marginpackets' trigger the rekeying before a SA expires.
233 The existing parameter 'rekeyfuzz' affects all margins.
235 - If no CA/Gateway certificate is specified in the NetworkManager plugin,
236 charon uses a set of trusted root certificates preinstalled by distributions.
237 The directory containing CA certificates can be specified using the
238 --with-nm-ca-dir=path configure option.
240 - Fixed the encoding of the Email relative distinguished name in left|rightid
243 - Fixed the broken parsing of PKCS#7 wrapped certificates by the pluto daemon.
245 - Fixed smartcard-based authentication in the pluto daemon which was broken by
246 the ECDSA support introduced with the 4.3.2 release.
248 - A patch contributed by Heiko Hund fixes mixed IPv6 in IPv4 and vice versa
249 tunnels established with the IKEv1 pluto daemon.
251 - The pluto daemon now uses the libstrongswan x509 plugin for certificates and
252 CRls and the struct id type was replaced by identification_t used by charon
253 and the libstrongswan library.
259 - IKEv2 charon daemon ported to FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Installation details can
260 be found on wiki.strongswan.org.
262 - ipsec statusall shows the number of bytes transmitted and received over
263 ESP connections configured by the IKEv2 charon daemon.
265 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports include files in ipsec.secrets.
271 - The configuration option --enable-integrity-test plus the strongswan.conf
272 option libstrongswan.integrity_test = yes activate integrity tests
273 of the IKE daemons charon and pluto, libstrongswan and all loaded
274 plugins. Thus dynamic library misconfigurations and non-malicious file
275 manipulations can be reliably detected.
277 - The new default setting libstrongswan.ecp_x_coordinate_only=yes allows
278 IKEv1 interoperability with MS Windows using the ECP DH groups 19 and 20.
280 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the AES-CCM and AES-GCM ESP
281 authenticated encryption algorithms.
283 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports V4 OpenPGP keys.
285 - The RDN parser vulnerability discovered by Orange Labs research team
286 was not completely fixed in version 4.3.2. Some more modifications
287 had to be applied to the asn1_length() function to make it robust.
293 - The new gcrypt plugin provides symmetric cipher, hasher, RNG, Diffie-Hellman
294 and RSA crypto primitives using the LGPL licensed GNU gcrypt library.
296 - libstrongswan features an integrated crypto selftest framework for registered
297 algorithms. The test-vector plugin provides a first set of test vectors and
298 allows pluto and charon to rely on tested crypto algorithms.
300 - pluto can now use all libstrongswan plugins with the exception of x509 and xcbc.
301 Thanks to the openssl plugin, the ECP Diffie-Hellman groups 19, 20, 21, 25, and
302 26 as well as ECDSA-256, ECDSA-384, and ECDSA-521 authentication can be used
305 - Applying their fuzzing tool, the Orange Labs vulnerability research team found
306 another two DoS vulnerabilities, one in the rather old ASN.1 parser of Relative
307 Distinguished Names (RDNs) and a second one in the conversion of ASN.1 UTCTIME
308 and GENERALIZEDTIME strings to a time_t value.
314 - The nm plugin now passes DNS/NBNS server information to NetworkManager,
315 allowing a gateway administrator to set DNS/NBNS configuration on clients
318 - The nm plugin also accepts CA certificates for gateway authentication. If
319 a CA certificate is configured, strongSwan uses the entered gateway address
320 as its idenitity, requiring the gateways certificate to contain the same as
321 subjectAltName. This allows a gateway administrator to deploy the same
322 certificates to Windows 7 and NetworkManager clients.
324 - The command ipsec purgeike deletes IKEv2 SAs that don't have a CHILD SA.
325 The command ipsec down <conn>{n} deletes CHILD SA instance n of connection
326 <conn> whereas ipsec down <conn>{*} deletes all CHILD SA instances.
327 The command ipsec down <conn>[n] deletes IKE SA instance n of connection
328 <conn> plus dependent CHILD SAs whereas ipsec down <conn>[*] deletes all
329 IKE SA instances of connection <conn>.
331 - Fixed a regression introduced in 4.3.0 where EAP authentication calculated
332 the AUTH payload incorrectly. Further, the EAP-MSCHAPv2 MSK key derivation
333 has been updated to be compatible with the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
335 - Refactored installation of triggering policies. Routed policies are handled
336 outside of IKE_SAs to keep them installed in any case. A tunnel gets
337 established only once, even if initiation is delayed due network outages.
339 - Improved the handling of multiple acquire signals triggered by the kernel.
341 - Fixed two DoS vulnerabilities in the charon daemon that were discovered by
342 fuzzing techniques: 1) Sending a malformed IKE_SA_INIT request leaved an
343 incomplete state which caused a null pointer dereference if a subsequent
344 CREATE_CHILD_SA request was sent. 2) Sending an IKE_AUTH request with either
345 a missing TSi or TSr payload caused a null pointer derefence because the
346 checks for TSi and TSr were interchanged. The IKEv2 fuzzer used was
347 developped by the Orange Labs vulnerability research team. The tool was
348 initially written by Gabriel Campana and is now maintained by Laurent Butti.
350 - Added support for AES counter mode in ESP in IKEv2 using the proposal
351 keywords aes128ctr, aes192ctr and aes256ctr.
353 - Further progress in refactoring pluto: Use of the curl and ldap plugins
354 for fetching crls and OCSP. Use of the random plugin to get keying material
355 from /dev/random or /dev/urandom. Use of the openssl plugin as an alternative
356 to the aes, des, sha1, sha2, and md5 plugins. The blowfish, twofish, and
357 serpent encryption plugins are now optional and are not enabled by default.
363 - Support for the IKEv2 Multiple Authentication Exchanges extension (RFC4739).
364 Initiators and responders can use several authentication rounds (e.g. RSA
365 followed by EAP) to authenticate. The new ipsec.conf leftauth/rightauth and
366 leftauth2/rightauth2 parameters define own authentication rounds or setup
367 constraints for the remote peer. See the ipsec.conf man page for more detials.
369 - If glibc printf hooks (register_printf_function) are not available,
370 strongSwan can use the vstr string library to run on non-glibc systems.
372 - The IKEv2 charon daemon can now configure the ESP CAMELLIA-CBC cipher
373 (esp=camellia128|192|256).
375 - Refactored the pluto and scepclient code to use basic functions (memory
376 allocation, leak detective, chunk handling, printf_hooks, strongswan.conf
377 attributes, ASN.1 parser, etc.) from the libstrongswan library.
379 - Up to two DNS and WINS servers to be sent via IKEv1 ModeConfig can be
380 configured in the pluto section of strongswan.conf.
386 - The new server-side EAP RADIUS plugin (--enable-eap-radius)
387 relays EAP messages to and from a RADIUS server. Succesfully
388 tested with with a freeradius server using EAP-MD5 and EAP-SIM.
390 - A vulnerability in the Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706) code was found by
391 Gerd v. Egidy <gerd.von.egidy@intra2net.com> of Intra2net AG affecting
392 all Openswan and strongSwan releases. A malicious (or expired ISAKMP)
393 R_U_THERE or R_U_THERE_ACK Dead Peer Detection packet can cause the
394 pluto IKE daemon to crash and restart. No authentication or encryption
395 is required to trigger this bug. One spoofed UDP packet can cause the
396 pluto IKE daemon to restart and be unresponsive for a few seconds while
397 restarting. This DPD null state vulnerability has been officially
398 registered as CVE-2009-0790 and is fixed by this release.
400 - ASN.1 to time_t conversion caused a time wrap-around for
401 dates after Jan 18 03:14:07 UTC 2038 on 32-bit platforms.
402 As a workaround such dates are set to the maximum representable
403 time, i.e. Jan 19 03:14:07 UTC 2038.
405 - Distinguished Names containing wildcards (*) are not sent in the
412 - Fixed a use-after-free bug in the DPD timeout section of the
413 IKEv1 pluto daemon which sporadically caused a segfault.
415 - Fixed a crash in the IKEv2 charon daemon occuring with
416 mixed RAM-based and SQL-based virtual IP address pools.
418 - Fixed ASN.1 parsing of algorithmIdentifier objects where the
419 parameters field is optional.
421 - Ported nm plugin to NetworkManager 7.1.
427 - Support of the EAP-MSCHAPv2 protocol enabled by the option
428 --enable-eap-mschapv2. Requires the MD4 hash algorithm enabled
429 either by --enable-md4 or --enable-openssl.
431 - Assignment of up to two DNS and up to two WINS servers to peers via
432 the IKEv2 Configuration Payload (CP). The IPv4 or IPv6 nameserver
433 addresses are defined in strongswan.conf.
435 - The strongSwan applet for the Gnome NetworkManager is now built and
436 distributed as a separate tarball under the name NetworkManager-strongswan.
442 - Fixed ESP NULL encryption broken by the refactoring of keymat.c.
443 Also introduced proper initialization and disposal of keying material.
445 - Fixed the missing listing of connection definitions in ipsec statusall
446 broken by an unfortunate local variable overload.
452 - Several performance improvements to handle thousands of tunnels with almost
453 linear upscaling. All relevant data structures have been replaced by faster
454 counterparts with better lookup times.
456 - Better parallelization to run charon on multiple cores. Due to improved
457 ressource locking and other optimizations the daemon can take full
458 advantage of 16 or even more cores.
460 - The load-tester plugin can use a NULL Diffie-Hellman group and simulate
461 unique identities and certificates by signing peer certificates using a CA
464 - The redesigned stroke in-memory IP pool handles leases. The "ipsec leases"
465 command queries assigned leases.
467 - Added support for smartcards in charon by using the ENGINE API provided by
468 OpenSSL, based on patches by Michael Roßberg.
470 - The Padlock plugin supports the hardware RNG found on VIA CPUs to provide a
471 reliable source of randomness.
476 - Flexible configuration of logging subsystem allowing to log to multiple
477 syslog facilities or to files using fine-grained log levels for each target.
479 - Load testing plugin to do stress testing of the IKEv2 daemon against self
480 or another host. Found and fixed issues during tests in the multi-threaded
481 use of the OpenSSL plugin.
483 - Added profiling code to synchronization primitives to find bottlenecks if
484 running on multiple cores. Found and fixed an issue where parts of the
485 Diffie-Hellman calculation acquired an exclusive lock. This greatly improves
486 parallelization to multiple cores.
488 - updown script invocation has been separated into a plugin of its own to
489 further slim down the daemon core.
491 - Separated IKE_SA/CHILD_SA key derivation process into a closed system,
492 allowing future implementations to use a secured environment in e.g. kernel
495 - The kernel interface of charon has been modularized. XFRM NETLINK (default)
496 and PFKEY (--enable-kernel-pfkey) interface plugins for the native IPsec
497 stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel as well as a PFKEY interface for the KLIPS
498 IPsec stack (--enable-kernel-klips) are provided.
500 - Basic Mobile IPv6 support has been introduced, securing Binding Update
501 messages as well as tunneled traffic between Mobile Node and Home Agent.
502 The installpolicy=no option allows peaceful cooperation with a dominant
503 mip6d daemon and the new type=transport_proxy implements the special MIPv6
504 IPsec transport proxy mode where the IKEv2 daemon uses the Care-of-Address
505 but the IPsec SA is set up for the Home Adress.
507 - Implemented migration of Mobile IPv6 connections using the KMADDRESS
508 field contained in XFRM_MSG_MIGRATE messages sent by the mip6d daemon
509 via the Linux 2.6.28 (or appropriately patched) kernel.
515 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports authentication based on raw public keys
516 stored in the SQL database backend. The ipsec listpubkeys command
517 lists the available raw public keys via the stroke interface.
519 - Several MOBIKE improvements: Detect changes in NAT mappings in DPD exchanges,
520 handle events if kernel detects NAT mapping changes in UDP-encapsulated
521 ESP packets (requires kernel patch), reuse old addesses in MOBIKE updates as
522 long as possible and other fixes.
524 - Fixed a bug in addr_in_subnet() which caused insertion of wrong source
525 routes for destination subnets having netwmasks not being a multiple of 8 bits.
526 Thanks go to Wolfgang Steudel, TU Ilmenau for reporting this bug.
532 - Fixed a Denial-of-Service vulnerability where an IKE_SA_INIT message with
533 a KE payload containing zeroes only can cause a crash of the IKEv2 charon
534 daemon due to a NULL pointer returned by the mpz_export() function of the
535 GNU Multiprecision Library (GMP). Thanks go to Mu Dynamics Research Labs
536 for making us aware of this problem.
538 - The new agent plugin provides a private key implementation on top of an
541 - The NetworkManager plugin has been extended to support certificate client
542 authentication using RSA keys loaded from a file or using ssh-agent.
544 - Daemon capability dropping has been ported to libcap and must be enabled
545 explicitly --with-capabilities=libcap. Future version will support the
546 newer libcap2 library.
548 - ipsec listalgs lists the IKEv2 cryptografic algorithms registered with the
549 charon keying daemon.
555 - A NetworkManager plugin allows GUI-based configuration of road-warrior
556 clients in a simple way. It features X509 based gateway authentication
557 and EAP client authentication, tunnel setup/teardown and storing passwords
558 in the Gnome Keyring.
560 - A new EAP-GTC plugin implements draft-sheffer-ikev2-gtc-00.txt and allows
561 username/password authentication against any PAM service on the gateway.
562 The new EAP method interacts nicely with the NetworkManager plugin and allows
563 client authentication against e.g. LDAP.
565 - Improved support for the EAP-Identity method. The new ipsec.conf eap_identity
566 parameter defines an additional identity to pass to the server in EAP
569 - The "ipsec statusall" command now lists CA restrictions, EAP
570 authentication types and EAP identities.
572 - Fixed two multithreading deadlocks occurring when starting up
573 several hundred tunnels concurrently.
575 - Fixed the --enable-integrity-test configure option which
576 computes a SHA-1 checksum over the libstrongswan library.
582 - Consistent logging of IKE and CHILD SAs at the audit (AUD) level.
584 - Improved the performance of the SQL-based virtual IP address pool
585 by introducing an additional addresses table. The leases table
586 storing only history information has become optional and can be
587 disabled by setting charon.plugins.sql.lease_history = no in
590 - The XFRM_STATE_AF_UNSPEC flag added to xfrm.h allows IPv4-over-IPv6
591 and IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnels with the 2.6.26 and later Linux kernels.
593 - management of different virtual IP pools for different
594 network interfaces have become possible.
596 - fixed a bug which prevented the assignment of more than 256
597 virtual IP addresses from a pool managed by an sql database.
599 - fixed a bug which did not delete own IPCOMP SAs in the kernel.
605 - Added statistics functions to ipsec pool --status and ipsec pool --leases
606 and input validation checks to various ipsec pool commands.
608 - ipsec statusall now lists all loaded charon plugins and displays
609 the negotiated IKEv2 cipher suite proposals.
611 - The openssl plugin supports the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman groups
612 19, 20, 21, 25, and 26.
614 - The openssl plugin supports ECDSA authentication using elliptic curve
617 - Fixed a bug in stroke which caused multiple charon threads to close
618 the file descriptors during packet transfers over the stroke socket.
620 - ESP sequence numbers are now migrated in IPsec SA updates handled by
621 MOBIKE. Works only with Linux kernels >= 2.6.17.
627 - Fixed the strongswan.conf path configuration problem that occurred when
628 --sysconfig was not set explicitly in ./configure.
630 - Fixed a number of minor bugs that where discovered during the 4th
631 IKEv2 interoperability workshop in San Antonio, TX.
637 - Plugins for libstrongswan and charon can optionally be loaded according
638 to a configuration in strongswan.conf. Most components provide a
639 "load = " option followed by a space separated list of plugins to load.
640 This allows e.g. the fallback from a hardware crypto accelerator to
641 to software-based crypto plugins.
643 - Charons SQL plugin has been extended by a virtual IP address pool.
644 Configurations with a rightsourceip=%poolname setting query a SQLite or
645 MySQL database for leases. The "ipsec pool" command helps in administrating
646 the pool database. See ipsec pool --help for the available options
648 - The Authenticated Encryption Algorithms AES-CCM-8/12/16 and AES-GCM-8/12/16
649 for ESP are now supported starting with the Linux 2.6.25 kernel. The
650 syntax is e.g. esp=aes128ccm12 or esp=aes256gcm16.
656 - Support for "Hash and URL" encoded certificate payloads has been implemented
657 in the IKEv2 daemon charon. Using the "certuribase" option of a CA section
658 allows to assign a base URL to all certificates issued by the specified CA.
659 The final URL is then built by concatenating that base and the hex encoded
660 SHA1 hash of the DER encoded certificate. Note that this feature is disabled
661 by default and must be enabled using the option "charon.hash_and_url".
663 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports the "uniqueids" option to close multiple
664 IKE_SAs with the same peer. The option value "keep" prefers existing
665 connection setups over new ones, where the value "replace" replaces existing
668 - The crypto factory in libstrongswan additionaly supports random number
669 generators, plugins may provide other sources of randomness. The default
670 plugin reads raw random data from /dev/(u)random.
672 - Extended the credential framework by a caching option to allow plugins
673 persistent caching of fetched credentials. The "cachecrl" option has been
676 - The new trustchain verification introduced in 4.2.0 has been parallelized.
677 Threads fetching CRL or OCSP information no longer block other threads.
679 - A new IKEv2 configuration attribute framework has been introduced allowing
680 plugins to provide virtual IP addresses, and in the future, other
681 configuration attribute services (e.g. DNS/WINS servers).
683 - The stroke plugin has been extended to provide virtual IP addresses from
684 a pool defined in ipsec.conf. The "rightsourceip" parameter now accepts
685 address pools in CIDR notation (e.g. 10.1.1.0/24). The parameter also accepts
686 the value "%poolname", where "poolname" identifies a pool provided by a
689 - Fixed compilation on uClibc and a couple of other minor bugs.
691 - Set DPD defaults in ipsec starter to dpd_delay=30s and dpd_timeout=150s.
693 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the ESP encryption algorithm CAMELLIA
694 with key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits, as well as the authentication
695 algorithm AES_XCBC_MAC. Configuration example: esp=camellia192-aesxcbc.
701 - libstrongswan has been modularized to attach crypto algorithms,
702 credential implementations (keys, certificates) and fetchers dynamically
703 through plugins. Existing code has been ported to plugins:
704 - RSA/Diffie-Hellman implementation using the GNU Multi Precision library
705 - X509 certificate system supporting CRLs, OCSP and attribute certificates
706 - Multiple plugins providing crypto algorithms in software
707 - CURL and OpenLDAP fetcher
709 - libstrongswan gained a relational database API which uses pluggable database
710 providers. Plugins for MySQL and SQLite are available.
712 - The IKEv2 keying daemon charon is more extensible. Generic plugins may provide
713 connection configuration, credentials and EAP methods or control the daemon.
714 Existing code has been ported to plugins:
715 - EAP-AKA, EAP-SIM, EAP-MD5 and EAP-Identity
716 - stroke configuration, credential and control (compatible to pluto)
717 - XML bases management protocol to control and query the daemon
718 The following new plugins are available:
719 - An experimental SQL configuration, credential and logging plugin on
720 top of either MySQL or SQLite
721 - A unit testing plugin to run tests at daemon startup
723 - The authentication and credential framework in charon has been heavily
724 refactored to support modular credential providers, proper
725 CERTREQ/CERT payload exchanges and extensible authorization rules.
727 - The framework of strongSwan Manager has envolved to the web application
728 framework libfast (FastCGI Application Server w/ Templates) and is usable
729 by other applications.
735 - IKE rekeying in NAT situations did not inherit the NAT conditions
736 to the rekeyed IKE_SA so that the UDP encapsulation was lost with
737 the next CHILD_SA rekeying.
739 - Wrong type definition of the next_payload variable in id_payload.c
740 caused an INVALID_SYNTAX error on PowerPC platforms.
742 - Implemented IKEv2 EAP-SIM server and client test modules that use
743 triplets stored in a file. For details on the configuration see
744 the scenario 'ikev2/rw-eap-sim-rsa'.
750 - Fixed error in the ordering of the certinfo_t records in the ocsp cache that
751 caused multiple entries of the same serial number to be created.
753 - Implementation of a simple EAP-MD5 module which provides CHAP
754 authentication. This may be interesting in conjunction with certificate
755 based server authentication, as weak passwords can't be brute forced
756 (in contradiction to traditional IKEv2 PSK).
758 - A complete software based implementation of EAP-AKA, using algorithms
759 specified in 3GPP2 (S.S0055). This implementation does not use an USIM,
760 but reads the secrets from ipsec.secrets. Make sure to read eap_aka.h
763 - Support for vendor specific EAP methods using Expanded EAP types. The
764 interface to EAP modules has been slightly changed, so make sure to
765 check the changes if you're already rolling your own modules.
771 - The default _updown script now dynamically inserts and removes ip6tables
772 firewall rules if leftfirewall=yes is set in IPv6 connections. New IPv6
773 net-net and roadwarrior (PSK/RSA) scenarios for both IKEv1 and IKEV2 were
776 - Implemented RFC4478 repeated authentication to force EAP/Virtual-IP clients
777 to reestablish an IKE_SA within a given timeframe.
779 - strongSwan Manager supports configuration listing, initiation and termination
780 of IKE and CHILD_SAs.
782 - Fixes and improvements to multithreading code.
784 - IKEv2 plugins have been renamed to libcharon-* to avoid naming conflicts.
785 Make sure to remove the old plugins in $libexecdir/ipsec, otherwise they get
792 - Removed recursive pthread mutexes since uClibc doesn't support them.
798 - In NAT traversal situations and multiple queued Quick Modes,
799 those pending connections inserted by auto=start after the
800 port floating from 500 to 4500 were erronously deleted.
802 - Added a "forceencaps" connection parameter to enforce UDP encapsulation
803 to surmount restrictive firewalls. NAT detection payloads are faked to
804 simulate a NAT situation and trick the other peer into NAT mode (IKEv2 only).
806 - Preview of strongSwan Manager, a web based configuration and monitoring
807 application. It uses a new XML control interface to query the IKEv2 daemon
808 (see http://wiki.strongswan.org/wiki/Manager).
810 - Experimental SQLite configuration backend which will provide the configuration
811 interface for strongSwan Manager in future releases.
813 - Further improvements to MOBIKE support.
819 - Since some third party IKEv2 implementations run into
820 problems with strongSwan announcing MOBIKE capability per
821 default, MOBIKE can be disabled on a per-connection-basis
822 using the mobike=no option. Whereas mobike=no disables the
823 sending of the MOBIKE_SUPPORTED notification and the floating
824 to UDP port 4500 with the IKE_AUTH request even if no NAT
825 situation has been detected, strongSwan will still support
826 MOBIKE acting as a responder.
828 - the default ipsec routing table plus its corresponding priority
829 used for inserting source routes has been changed from 100 to 220.
830 It can be configured using the --with-ipsec-routing-table and
831 --with-ipsec-routing-table-prio options.
833 - the --enable-integrity-test configure option tests the
834 integrity of the libstrongswan crypto code during the charon
837 - the --disable-xauth-vid configure option disables the sending
838 of the XAUTH vendor ID. This can be used as a workaround when
839 interoperating with some Windows VPN clients that get into
840 trouble upon reception of an XAUTH VID without eXtended
841 AUTHentication having been configured.
843 - ipsec stroke now supports the rereadsecrets, rereadaacerts,
844 rereadacerts, and listacerts options.
850 - If a DNS lookup failure occurs when resolving right=%<FQDN>
851 or right=<FQDN> combined with rightallowany=yes then the
852 connection is not updated by ipsec starter thus preventing
853 the disruption of an active IPsec connection. Only if the DNS
854 lookup successfully returns with a changed IP address the
855 corresponding connection definition is updated.
857 - Routes installed by the keying daemons are now in a separate
858 routing table with the ID 100 to avoid conflicts with the main
859 table. Route lookup for IKEv2 traffic is done in userspace to ignore
860 routes installed for IPsec, as IKE traffic shouldn't get encapsulated.
866 - The pluto IKEv1 daemon now exhibits the same behaviour as its
867 IKEv2 companion charon by inserting an explicit route via the
868 _updown script only if a sourceip exists. This is admissible
869 since routing through the IPsec tunnel is handled automatically
870 by NETKEY's IPsec policies. As a consequence the left|rightnexthop
871 parameter is not required any more.
873 - The new IKEv1 parameter right|leftallowany parameters helps to handle
874 the case where both peers possess dynamic IP addresses that are
875 usually resolved using DynDNS or a similar service. The configuration
880 can be used by the initiator to start up a connection to a peer
881 by resolving peer.foo.bar into the currently allocated IP address.
882 Thanks to the rightallowany flag the connection behaves later on
887 so that the peer can rekey the connection as an initiator when his
888 IP address changes. An alternative notation is
892 which will implicitly set rightallowany=yes.
894 - ipsec starter now fails more gracefully in the presence of parsing
895 errors. Flawed ca and conn section are discarded and pluto is started
896 if non-fatal errors only were encountered. If right=%peer.foo.bar
897 cannot be resolved by DNS then right=%any will be used so that passive
898 connections as a responder are still possible.
900 - The new pkcs11initargs parameter that can be placed in the
901 setup config section of /etc/ipsec.conf allows the definition
902 of an argument string that is used with the PKCS#11 C_Initialize()
903 function. This non-standard feature is required by the NSS softoken
904 library. This patch was contributed by Robert Varga.
906 - Fixed a bug in ipsec starter introduced by strongswan-2.8.5
907 which caused a segmentation fault in the presence of unknown
908 or misspelt keywords in ipsec.conf. This bug fix was contributed
911 - Partial support for MOBIKE in IKEv2. The initiator acts on interface/
912 address configuration changes and updates IKE and IPsec SAs dynamically.
918 - IKEv2 peer configuration selection now can be based on a given
919 certification authority using the rightca= statement.
921 - IKEv2 authentication based on RSA signatures now can handle multiple
922 certificates issued for a given peer ID. This allows a smooth transition
923 in the case of a peer certificate renewal.
925 - IKEv2: Support for requesting a specific virtual IP using leftsourceip on the
926 client and returning requested virtual IPs using rightsourceip=%config
927 on the server. If the server does not support configuration payloads, the
928 client enforces its leftsourceip parameter.
930 - The ./configure options --with-uid/--with-gid allow pluto and charon
931 to drop their privileges to a minimum and change to an other UID/GID. This
932 improves the systems security, as a possible intruder may only get the
933 CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.
935 - Further modularization of charon: Pluggable control interface and
936 configuration backend modules provide extensibility. The control interface
937 for stroke is included, and further interfaces using DBUS (NetworkManager)
938 or XML are on the way. A backend for storing configurations in the daemon
939 is provided and more advanced backends (using e.g. a database) are trivial
942 - Fixed a compilation failure in libfreeswan occuring with Linux kernel
949 - Support for an additional Diffie-Hellman exchange when creating/rekeying
950 a CHILD_SA in IKEv2 (PFS). PFS is enabled when the proposal contains a
951 DH group (e.g. "esp=aes128-sha1-modp1536"). Further, DH group negotiation
952 is implemented properly for rekeying.
954 - Support for the AES-XCBC-96 MAC algorithm for IPsec SAs when using IKEv2
955 (requires linux >= 2.6.20). It is enabled using e.g. "esp=aes256-aesxcbc".
957 - Working IPv4-in-IPv6 and IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels for linux >= 2.6.21.
959 - Added support for EAP modules which do not establish an MSK.
961 - Removed the dependencies from the /usr/include/linux/ headers by
962 including xfrm.h, ipsec.h, and pfkeyv2.h in the distribution.
964 - crlNumber is now listed by ipsec listcrls
966 - The xauth_modules.verify_secret() function now passes the
973 - Server side cookie support. If to may IKE_SAs are in CONNECTING state,
974 cookies are enabled and protect against DoS attacks with faked source
975 addresses. Number of IKE_SAs in CONNECTING state is also limited per
976 peer address to avoid resource exhaustion. IKE_SA_INIT messages are
977 compared to properly detect retransmissions and incoming retransmits are
978 detected even if the IKE_SA is blocked (e.g. doing OCSP fetches).
980 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports dynamic http- and ldap-based CRL
981 fetching enabled by crlcheckinterval > 0 and caching fetched CRLs
982 enabled by cachecrls=yes.
984 - Added the configuration options --enable-nat-transport which enables
985 the potentially insecure NAT traversal for IPsec transport mode and
986 --disable-vendor-id which disables the sending of the strongSwan
989 - Fixed a long-standing bug in the pluto IKEv1 daemon which caused
990 a segmentation fault if a malformed payload was detected in the
991 IKE MR2 message and pluto tried to send an encrypted notification
994 - Added the NATT_IETF_02_N Vendor ID in order to support IKEv1 connections
995 with Windows 2003 Server which uses a wrong VID hash.
1001 - Support of SHA2_384 hash function for protecting IKEv1
1002 negotiations and support of SHA2 signatures in X.509 certificates.
1004 - Fixed a serious bug in the computation of the SHA2-512 HMAC
1005 function. Introduced automatic self-test of all IKEv1 hash
1006 and hmac functions during pluto startup. Failure of a self-test
1007 currently issues a warning only but does not exit pluto [yet].
1009 - Support for SHA2-256/384/512 PRF and HMAC functions in IKEv2.
1011 - Full support of CA information sections. ipsec listcainfos
1012 now shows all collected crlDistributionPoints and OCSP
1015 - Support of the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for IKEv2.
1016 This feature requires the HTTP fetching capabilities of the libcurl
1017 library which must be enabled by setting the --enable-http configure
1020 - Refactored core of the IKEv2 message processing code, allowing better
1021 code reuse and separation.
1023 - Virtual IP support in IKEv2 using INTERNAL_IP4/6_ADDRESS configuration
1024 payload. Additionally, the INTERNAL_IP4/6_DNS attribute is interpreted
1025 by the requestor and installed in a resolv.conf file.
1027 - The IKEv2 daemon charon installs a route for each IPsec policy to use
1028 the correct source address even if an application does not explicitly
1031 - Integrated the EAP framework into charon which loads pluggable EAP library
1032 modules. The ipsec.conf parameter authby=eap initiates EAP authentication
1033 on the client side, while the "eap" parameter on the server side defines
1034 the EAP method to use for client authentication.
1035 A generic client side EAP-Identity module and an EAP-SIM authentication
1036 module using a third party card reader implementation are included.
1038 - Added client side support for cookies.
1040 - Integrated the fixes done at the IKEv2 interoperability bakeoff, including
1041 strict payload order, correct INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD rejection and other minor
1042 fixes to enhance interoperability with other implementations.
1048 - strongSwan now interoperates with the NCP Secure Entry Client,
1049 the Shrew Soft VPN Client, and the Cisco VPN client, doing both
1050 XAUTH and Mode Config.
1052 - UNITY attributes are now recognized and UNITY_BANNER is set
1053 to a default string.
1059 - IKEv1: Support for extended authentication (XAUTH) in combination
1060 with ISAKMP Main Mode RSA or PSK authentication. Both client and
1061 server side were implemented. Handling of user credentials can
1062 be done by a run-time loadable XAUTH module. By default user
1063 credentials are stored in ipsec.secrets.
1065 - IKEv2: Support for reauthentication when rekeying
1067 - IKEv2: Support for transport mode
1069 - fixed a lot of bugs related to byte order
1071 - various other bugfixes
1077 - IKEv1: Implementation of ModeConfig push mode via the new connection
1078 keyword modeconfig=push allows interoperability with Cisco VPN gateways.
1080 - IKEv1: The command ipsec statusall now shows "DPD active" for all
1081 ISAKMP SAs that are under active Dead Peer Detection control.
1083 - IKEv2: Charon's logging and debugging framework has been completely rewritten.
1084 Instead of logger, special printf() functions are used to directly
1085 print objects like hosts (%H) identifications (%D), certificates (%Q),
1086 etc. The number of debugging levels have been reduced to:
1088 0 (audit), 1 (control), 2 (controlmore), 3 (raw), 4 (private)
1090 The debugging levels can either be specified statically in ipsec.conf as
1093 charondebug="lib 1, cfg 3, net 2"
1095 or changed at runtime via stroke as
1097 ipsec stroke loglevel cfg 2
1103 - Implemented full support for IPv6-in-IPv6 tunnels.
1105 - Added configuration options for dead peer detection in IKEv2. dpd_action
1106 types "clear", "hold" and "restart" are supported. The dpd_timeout
1107 value is not used, as the normal retransmission policy applies to
1108 detect dead peers. The dpd_delay parameter enables sending of empty
1109 informational message to detect dead peers in case of inactivity.
1111 - Added support for preshared keys in IKEv2. PSK keys configured in
1112 ipsec.secrets are loaded. The authby parameter specifies the authentication
1113 method to authentificate ourself, the other peer may use PSK or RSA.
1115 - Changed retransmission policy to respect the keyingtries parameter.
1117 - Added private key decryption. PEM keys encrypted with AES-128/192/256
1118 or 3DES are supported.
1120 - Implemented DES/3DES algorithms in libstrongswan. 3DES can be used to
1121 encrypt IKE traffic.
1123 - Implemented SHA-256/384/512 in libstrongswan, allows usage of certificates
1124 signed with such a hash algorithm.
1126 - Added initial support for updown scripts. The actions up-host/client and
1127 down-host/client are executed. The leftfirewall=yes parameter
1128 uses the default updown script to insert dynamic firewall rules, a custom
1129 updown script may be specified with the leftupdown parameter.
1135 - Added support for the auto=route ipsec.conf parameter and the
1136 ipsec route/unroute commands for IKEv2. This allows to set up IKE_SAs and
1137 CHILD_SAs dynamically on demand when traffic is detected by the
1140 - Added support for rekeying IKE_SAs in IKEv2 using the ikelifetime parameter.
1141 As specified in IKEv2, no reauthentication is done (unlike in IKEv1), only
1142 new keys are generated using perfect forward secrecy. An optional flag
1143 which enforces reauthentication will be implemented later.
1145 - "sha" and "sha1" are now treated as synonyms in the ike= and esp=
1146 algorithm configuration statements.
1152 - Full X.509 certificate trust chain verification has been implemented.
1153 End entity certificates can be exchanged via CERT payloads. The current
1154 default is leftsendcert=always, since CERTREQ payloads are not supported
1155 yet. Optional CRLs must be imported locally into /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
1157 - Added support for leftprotoport/rightprotoport parameters in IKEv2. IKEv2
1158 would offer more possibilities for traffic selection, but the Linux kernel
1159 currently does not support it. That's why we stick with these simple
1160 ipsec.conf rules for now.
1162 - Added Dead Peer Detection (DPD) which checks liveliness of remote peer if no
1163 IKE or ESP traffic is received. DPD is currently hardcoded (dpdaction=clear,
1166 - Initial NAT traversal support in IKEv2. Charon includes NAT detection
1167 notify payloads to detect NAT routers between the peers. It switches
1168 to port 4500, uses UDP encapsulated ESP packets, handles peer address
1169 changes gracefully and sends keep alive message periodically.
1171 - Reimplemented IKE_SA state machine for charon, which allows simultaneous
1172 rekeying, more shared code, cleaner design, proper retransmission
1173 and a more extensible code base.
1175 - The mixed PSK/RSA roadwarrior detection capability introduced by the
1176 strongswan-2.7.0 release necessitated the pre-parsing of the IKE proposal
1177 payloads by the responder right before any defined IKE Main Mode state had
1178 been established. Although any form of bad proposal syntax was being correctly
1179 detected by the payload parser, the subsequent error handler didn't check
1180 the state pointer before logging current state information, causing an
1181 immediate crash of the pluto keying daemon due to a NULL pointer.
1187 - Added algorithm selection to charon: New default algorithms for
1188 ike=aes128-sha-modp2048, as both daemons support it. The default
1189 for IPsec SAs is now esp=aes128-sha,3des-md5. charon handles
1190 the ike/esp parameter the same way as pluto. As this syntax does
1191 not allow specification of a pseudo random function, the same
1192 algorithm as for integrity is used (currently sha/md5). Supported
1194 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256
1195 Integrity/PRF: md5, sha (using hmac)
1196 DH-Groups: modp768, 1024, 1536, 2048, 4096, 8192
1198 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256, 3des, blowfish128,
1199 blowfish192, blowfish256
1200 Integrity: md5, sha1
1201 More IKE encryption algorithms will come after porting libcrypto into
1204 - initial support for rekeying CHILD_SAs using IKEv2. Currently no
1205 perfect forward secrecy is used. The rekeying parameters rekey,
1206 rekeymargin, rekeyfuzz and keylife from ipsec.conf are now supported
1207 when using IKEv2. WARNING: charon currently is unable to handle
1208 simultaneous rekeying. To avoid such a situation, use a large
1209 rekeyfuzz, or even better, set rekey=no on one peer.
1211 - support for host2host, net2net, host2net (roadwarrior) tunnels
1212 using predefined RSA certificates (see uml scenarios for
1213 configuration examples).
1215 - new build environment featuring autotools. Features such
1216 as HTTP, LDAP and smartcard support may be enabled using
1217 the ./configure script. Changing install directories
1218 is possible, too. See ./configure --help for more details.
1220 - better integration of charon with ipsec starter, which allows
1221 (almost) transparent operation with both daemons. charon
1222 handles ipsec commands up, down, status, statusall, listall,
1223 listcerts and allows proper load, reload and delete of connections
1230 - initial support of the IKEv2 protocol. Connections in
1231 ipsec.conf designated by keyexchange=ikev2 are negotiated
1232 by the new IKEv2 charon keying daemon whereas those marked
1233 by keyexchange=ikev1 or the default keyexchange=ike are
1234 handled thy the IKEv1 pluto keying daemon. Currently only
1235 a limited subset of functions are available with IKEv2
1236 (Default AES encryption, authentication based on locally
1237 imported X.509 certificates, unencrypted private RSA keys
1238 in PKCS#1 file format, limited functionality of the ipsec
1245 - the dynamic iptables rules from the _updown_x509 template
1246 for KLIPS and the _updown_policy template for NETKEY have
1247 been merged into the default _updown script. The existing
1248 left|rightfirewall keyword causes the automatic insertion
1249 and deletion of ACCEPT rules for tunneled traffic upon
1250 the successful setup and teardown of an IPsec SA, respectively.
1251 left|rightfirwall can be used with KLIPS under any Linux 2.4
1252 kernel or with NETKEY under a Linux kernel version >= 2.6.16
1253 in conjuction with iptables >= 1.3.5. For NETKEY under a Linux
1254 kernel version < 2.6.16 which does not support IPsec policy
1255 matching yet, please continue to use a copy of the _updown_espmark
1256 template loaded via the left|rightupdown keyword.
1258 - a new left|righthostaccess keyword has been introduced which
1259 can be used in conjunction with left|rightfirewall and the
1260 default _updown script. By default leftfirewall=yes inserts
1261 a bi-directional iptables FORWARD rule for a local client network
1262 with a netmask different from 255.255.255.255 (single host).
1263 This does not allow to access the VPN gateway host via its
1264 internal network interface which is part of the client subnet
1265 because an iptables INPUT and OUTPUT rule would be required.
1266 lefthostaccess=yes will cause this additional ACCEPT rules to
1269 - mixed PSK|RSA roadwarriors are now supported. The ISAKMP proposal
1270 payload is preparsed in order to find out whether the roadwarrior
1271 requests PSK or RSA so that a matching connection candidate can
1278 - the new _updown_policy template allows ipsec policy based
1279 iptables firewall rules. Required are iptables version
1280 >= 1.3.5 and linux kernel >= 2.6.16. This script obsoletes
1281 the _updown_espmark template, so that no INPUT mangle rules
1282 are required any more.
1284 - added support of DPD restart mode
1286 - ipsec starter now allows the use of wildcards in include
1287 statements as e.g. in "include /etc/my_ipsec/*.conf".
1288 Patch courtesy of Matthias Haas.
1290 - the Netscape OID 'employeeNumber' is now recognized and can be
1291 used as a Relative Distinguished Name in certificates.
1297 - /etc/init.d/ipsec or /etc/rc.d/ipsec is now a copy of the ipsec
1298 command and not of ipsec setup any more.
1300 - ipsec starter now supports AH authentication in conjunction with
1301 ESP encryption. AH authentication is configured in ipsec.conf
1302 via the auth=ah parameter.
1304 - The command ipsec scencrypt|scdecrypt <args> is now an alias for
1305 ipsec whack --scencrypt|scdecrypt <args>.
1307 - get_sa_info() now determines for the native netkey IPsec stack
1308 the exact time of the last use of an active eroute. This information
1309 is used by the Dead Peer Detection algorithm and is also displayed by
1310 the ipsec status command.
1316 - running under the native Linux 2.6 IPsec stack, the function
1317 get_sa_info() is called by ipsec auto --status to display the current
1318 number of transmitted bytes per IPsec SA.
1320 - get_sa_info() is also used by the Dead Peer Detection process to detect
1321 recent ESP activity. If ESP traffic was received from the peer within
1322 the last dpd_delay interval then no R_Y_THERE notification must be sent.
1324 - strongSwan now supports the Relative Distinguished Name "unstructuredName"
1325 in ID_DER_ASN1_DN identities. The following notations are possible:
1327 rightid="unstructuredName=John Doe"
1328 rightid="UN=John Doe"
1330 - fixed a long-standing bug which caused PSK-based roadwarrior connections
1331 to segfault in the function id.c:same_id() called by keys.c:get_secret()
1332 if an FQDN, USER_FQDN, or Key ID was defined, as in the following example.
1339 - the ipsec command now supports most ipsec auto commands (e.g. ipsec listall).
1341 - ipsec starter didn't set host_addr and client.addr ports in whack msg.
1343 - in order to guarantee backwards-compatibility with the script-based
1344 auto function (e.g. auto --replace), the ipsec starter scripts stores
1345 the defaultroute information in the temporary file /var/run/ipsec.info.
1347 - The compile-time option USE_XAUTH_VID enables the sending of the XAUTH
1348 Vendor ID which is expected by Cisco PIX 7 boxes that act as IKE Mode Config
1351 - the ipsec starter now also recognizes the parameters authby=never and
1352 type=passthrough|pass|drop|reject.
1358 - ipsec starter now supports the also parameter which allows
1359 a modular structure of the connection definitions. Thus
1360 "ipsec start" is now ready to replace "ipsec setup".
1366 - Mathieu Lafon's popular ipsec starter tool has been added to the
1367 strongSwan distribution. Many thanks go to Stephan Scholz from astaro
1368 for his integration work. ipsec starter is a C program which is going
1369 to replace the various shell and awk starter scripts (setup, _plutoload,
1370 _plutostart, _realsetup, _startklips, _confread, and auto). Since
1371 ipsec.conf is now parsed only once, the starting of multiple tunnels is
1372 accelerated tremedously.
1374 - Added support of %defaultroute to the ipsec starter. If the IP address
1375 changes, a HUP signal to the ipsec starter will automatically
1376 reload pluto's connections.
1378 - moved most compile time configurations from pluto/Makefile to
1379 Makefile.inc by defining the options USE_LIBCURL, USE_LDAP,
1380 USE_SMARTCARD, and USE_NAT_TRAVERSAL_TRANSPORT_MODE.
1382 - removed the ipsec verify and ipsec newhostkey commands
1384 - fixed some 64-bit issues in formatted print statements
1386 - The scepclient functionality implementing the Simple Certificate
1387 Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) is nearly complete but hasn't been
1394 - CA certicates are now automatically loaded from a smartcard
1395 or USB crypto token and appear in the ipsec auto --listcacerts
1402 - when using "ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>" with a PKCS#11
1403 library that does not support the C_Encrypt() Cryptoki
1404 function (e.g. OpenSC), the RSA encryption is done in
1405 software using the public key fetched from the smartcard.
1407 - The scepclient function now allows to define the
1408 validity of a self-signed certificate using the --days,
1409 --startdate, and --enddate options. The default validity
1410 has been changed from one year to five years.
1416 - the config setup parameter pkcs11proxy=yes opens pluto's PKCS#11
1417 interface to other applications for RSA encryption and decryption
1418 via the whack interface. Notation:
1420 ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>
1421 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
1422 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
1425 ipsec whack --scdecrypt <data>
1426 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
1427 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
1430 The default setting for inbase and outbase is hex.
1432 The new proxy interface can be used for securing symmetric
1433 encryption keys required by the cryptoloop or dm-crypt
1434 disk encryption schemes, especially in the case when
1435 pkcs11keepstate=yes causes pluto to lock the pkcs11 slot
1438 - if the file /etc/ipsec.secrets is lacking during the startup of
1439 pluto then the root-readable file /etc/ipsec.d/private/myKey.der
1440 containing a 2048 bit RSA private key and a matching self-signed
1441 certificate stored in the file /etc/ipsec.d/certs/selfCert.der
1442 is automatically generated by calling the function
1444 ipsec scepclient --out pkcs1 --out cert-self
1446 scepclient was written by Jan Hutter and Martin Willi, students
1447 at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, Switzerland.
1453 - the current extension of the PKCS#7 framework introduced
1454 a parsing error in PKCS#7 wrapped X.509 certificates that are
1455 e.g. transmitted by Windows XP when multi-level CAs are used.
1456 the parsing syntax has been fixed.
1458 - added a patch by Gerald Richter which tolerates multiple occurrences
1459 of the ipsec0 interface when using KLIPS.
1465 - with gawk-3.1.4 the word "default2 has become a protected
1466 keyword for use in switch statements and cannot be used any
1467 more in the strongSwan scripts. This problem has been
1468 solved by renaming "default" to "defaults" and "setdefault"
1469 in the scripts _confread and auto, respectively.
1471 - introduced the parameter leftsendcert with the values
1473 always|yes (the default, always send a cert)
1474 ifasked (send the cert only upon a cert request)
1475 never|no (never send a cert, used for raw RSA keys and
1478 - fixed the initialization of the ESP key length to a default of
1479 128 bits in the case that the peer does not send a key length
1480 attribute for AES encryption.
1482 - applied Herbert Xu's uniqueIDs patch
1484 - applied Herbert Xu's CLOEXEC patches
1490 - CRLs can now be cached also in the case when the issuer's
1491 certificate does not contain a subjectKeyIdentifier field.
1492 In that case the subjectKeyIdentifier is computed by pluto as the
1493 160 bit SHA-1 hash of the issuer's public key in compliance
1494 with section 4.2.1.2 of RFC 3280.
1496 - Fixed a bug introduced by strongswan-2.5.1 which eliminated
1497 not only multiple Quick Modes of a given connection but also
1498 multiple connections between two security gateways.
1504 - Under the native IPsec of the Linux 2.6 kernel, a %trap eroute
1505 installed either by setting auto=route in ipsec.conf or by
1506 a connection put into hold, generates an XFRM_AQUIRE event
1507 for each packet that wants to use the not-yet exisiting
1508 tunnel. Up to now each XFRM_AQUIRE event led to an entry in
1509 the Quick Mode queue, causing multiple IPsec SA to be
1510 established in rapid succession. Starting with strongswan-2.5.1
1511 only a single IPsec SA is established per host-pair connection.
1513 - Right after loading the PKCS#11 module, all smartcard slots are
1514 searched for certificates. The result can be viewed using
1517 ipsec auto --listcards
1519 The certificate objects found in the slots are numbered
1520 starting with #1, #2, etc. This position number can be used to address
1521 certificates (leftcert=%smartcard) and keys (: PIN %smartcard)
1522 in ipsec.conf and ipsec.secrets, respectively:
1524 %smartcard (selects object #1)
1525 %smartcard#1 (selects object #1)
1526 %smartcard#3 (selects object #3)
1528 As an alternative the existing retrieval scheme can be used:
1530 %smartcard:45 (selects object with id=45)
1531 %smartcard0 (selects first object in slot 0)
1532 %smartcard4:45 (selects object in slot 4 with id=45)
1534 - Depending on the settings of CKA_SIGN and CKA_DECRYPT
1535 private key flags either C_Sign() or C_Decrypt() is used
1536 to generate a signature.
1538 - The output buffer length parameter siglen in C_Sign()
1539 is now initialized to the actual size of the output
1540 buffer prior to the function call. This fixes the
1541 CKR_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL error that could occur when using
1542 the OpenSC PKCS#11 module.
1544 - Changed the initialization of the PKCS#11 CK_MECHANISM in
1545 C_SignInit() to mech = { CKM_RSA_PKCS, NULL_PTR, 0 }.
1547 - Refactored the RSA public/private key code and transferred it
1548 from keys.c to the new pkcs1.c file as a preparatory step
1549 towards the release of the SCEP client.
1555 - The loading of a PKCS#11 smartcard library module during
1556 runtime does not require OpenSC library functions any more
1557 because the corresponding code has been integrated into
1558 smartcard.c. Also the RSAREF pkcs11 header files have been
1559 included in a newly created pluto/rsaref directory so that
1560 no external include path has to be defined any longer.
1562 - A long-awaited feature has been implemented at last:
1563 The local caching of CRLs fetched via HTTP or LDAP, activated
1564 by the parameter cachecrls=yes in the config setup section
1565 of ipsec.conf. The dynamically fetched CRLs are stored under
1566 a unique file name containing the issuer's subjectKeyID
1567 in /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
1569 - Applied a one-line patch courtesy of Michael Richardson
1570 from the Openswan project which fixes the kernel-oops
1571 in KLIPS when an snmp daemon is running on the same box.
1577 - Eliminated null length CRL distribution point strings.
1579 - Fixed a trust path evaluation bug introduced with 2.4.3
1585 - Improved the joint OCSP / CRL revocation policy.
1586 OCSP responses have precedence over CRL entries.
1588 - Introduced support of CRLv2 reason codes.
1590 - Fixed a bug with key-pad equipped readers which caused
1591 pluto to prompt for the pin via the console when the first
1592 occasion to enter the pin via the key-pad was missed.
1594 - When pluto is built with LDAP_V3 enabled, the library
1595 liblber required by newer versions of openldap is now
1602 - Added the _updown_espmark template which requires all
1603 incoming ESP traffic to be marked with a default mark
1606 - Introduced the pkcs11keepstate parameter in the config setup
1607 section of ipsec.conf. With pkcs11keepstate=yes the PKCS#11
1608 session and login states are kept as long as possible during
1609 the lifetime of pluto. This means that a PIN entry via a key
1610 pad has to be done only once.
1612 - Introduced the pkcs11module parameter in the config setup
1613 section of ipsec.conf which specifies the PKCS#11 module
1614 to be used with smart cards. Example:
1616 pkcs11module=/usr/lib/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.lo
1618 - Added support of smartcard readers equipped with a PIN pad.
1620 - Added patch by Jay Pfeifer which detects when netkey
1621 modules have been statically built into the Linux 2.6 kernel.
1623 - Added two patches by Herbert Xu. The first uses ip xfrm
1624 instead of setkey to flush the IPsec policy database. The
1625 second sets the optional flag in inbound IPComp SAs only.
1627 - Applied Ulrich Weber's patch which fixes an interoperability
1628 problem between native IPsec and KLIPS systems caused by
1629 setting the replay window to 32 instead of 0 for ipcomp.
1635 - Fixed a bug which caused an unwanted Mode Config request
1636 to be initiated in the case where "right" was used to denote
1637 the local side in ipsec.conf and "left" the remote side,
1638 contrary to the recommendation that "right" be remote and
1645 - updated Vendor ID to strongSwan-2.4.0
1647 - updated copyright statement to include David Buechi and
1654 - strongSwan now communicates with attached smartcards and
1655 USB crypto tokens via the standardized PKCS #11 interface.
1656 By default the OpenSC library from www.opensc.org is used
1657 but any other PKCS#11 library could be dynamically linked.
1658 strongSwan's PKCS#11 API was implemented by David Buechi
1659 and Michael Meier, both graduates of the Zurich University
1660 of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland.
1662 - When a %trap eroute is triggered by an outgoing IP packet
1663 then the native IPsec stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel [often/
1664 always?] returns an XFRM_ACQUIRE message with an undefined
1665 protocol family field and the connection setup fails.
1666 As a workaround IPv4 (AF_INET) is now assumed.
1668 - the results of the UML test scenarios are now enhanced
1669 with block diagrams of the virtual network topology used
1670 in a particular test.
1676 - fixed IV used to decrypt informational messages.
1677 This bug was introduced with Mode Config functionality.
1679 - fixed NCP Vendor ID.
1681 - undid one of Ulrich Weber's maximum udp size patches
1682 because it caused a segmentation fault with NAT-ed
1685 - added UML scenarios wildcards and attr-cert which
1686 demonstrate the implementation of IPsec policies based
1687 on wildcard parameters contained in Distinguished Names and
1688 on X.509 attribute certificates, respectively.
1694 - Added basic Mode Config functionality
1696 - Added Mathieu Lafon's patch which upgrades the status of
1697 the NAT-Traversal implementation to RFC 3947.
1699 - The _startklips script now also loads the xfrm4_tunnel
1702 - Added Ulrich Weber's netlink replay window size and
1703 maximum udp size patches.
1705 - UML testing now uses the Linux 2.6.10 UML kernel by default.
1711 - Eric Marchionni and Patrik Rayo, both recent graduates from
1712 the Zuercher Hochschule Winterthur in Switzerland, created a
1713 User-Mode-Linux test setup for strongSwan. For more details
1714 please read the INSTALL and README documents in the testing
1717 - Full support of group attributes based on X.509 attribute
1718 certificates. Attribute certificates can be generated
1719 using the openac facility. For more details see
1723 The group attributes can be used in connection definitions
1724 in order to give IPsec access to specific user groups.
1725 This is done with the new parameter left|rightgroups as in
1727 rightgroups="Research, Sales"
1729 giving access to users possessing the group attributes
1730 Research or Sales, only.
1732 - In Quick Mode clients with subnet mask /32 are now
1733 coded as IP_V4_ADDRESS or IP_V6_ADDRESS. This should
1734 fix rekeying problems with the SafeNet/SoftRemote and NCP
1735 Secure Entry Clients.
1737 - Changed the defaults of the ikelifetime and keylife parameters
1738 to 3h and 1h, respectively. The maximum allowable values are
1739 now both set to 24 h.
1741 - Suppressed notification wars between two IPsec peers that
1742 could e.g. be triggered by incorrect ISAKMP encryption.
1744 - Public RSA keys can now have identical IDs if either the
1745 issuing CA or the serial number is different. The serial
1746 number of a certificate is now shown by the command
1748 ipsec auto --listpubkeys
1754 - Added Tuomo Soini's sourceip feature which allows a strongSwan
1755 roadwarrior to use a fixed Virtual IP (see README section 2.6)
1756 and reduces the well-known four tunnel case on VPN gateways to
1757 a single tunnel definition (see README section 2.4).
1759 - Fixed a bug occuring with NAT-Traversal enabled when the responder
1760 suddenly turns initiator and the initiator cannot find a matching
1761 connection because of the floated IKE port 4500.
1763 - Removed misleading ipsec verify command from barf.
1765 - Running under the native IP stack, ipsec --version now shows
1766 the Linux kernel version (courtesy to the Openswan project).
1772 - Introduced the ipsec auto --listalgs monitoring command which lists
1773 all currently registered IKE and ESP algorithms.
1775 - Fixed a bug in the ESP algorithm selection occuring when the strict flag
1776 is set and the first proposed transform does not match.
1778 - Fixed another deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex,
1779 occuring when a smartcard is present.
1781 - Prevented that a superseded Phase1 state can trigger a DPD_TIMEOUT event.
1783 - Fixed the printing of the notification names (null)
1785 - Applied another of Herbert Xu's Netlink patches.
1791 - Support of Dead Peer Detection. The connection parameter
1793 dpdaction=clear|hold
1795 activates DPD for the given connection.
1797 - The default Opportunistic Encryption (OE) policy groups are not
1798 automatically included anymore. Those wishing to activate OE can include
1799 the policy group with the following statement in ipsec.conf:
1801 include /etc/ipsec.d/examples/oe.conf
1803 The default for [right|left]rsasigkey is now set to %cert.
1805 - strongSwan now has a Vendor ID of its own which can be activated
1806 using the compile option VENDORID
1808 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch which sets the compression algorithm correctly.
1810 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch fixing an ESPINUDP problem
1812 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch setting source/destination port numbers.
1814 - Reapplied one of Herbert Xu's NAT-Traversal patches which got
1815 lost during the migration from SuperFreeS/WAN.
1817 - Fixed a deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex.
1819 - Fixed the unsharing of alg parameters when instantiating group
1826 - Thomas Walpuski made me aware of a potential DoS attack via
1827 a PKCS#7-wrapped certificate bundle which could overwrite valid CA
1828 certificates in Pluto's authority certificate store. This vulnerability
1829 was fixed by establishing trust in CA candidate certificates up to a
1830 trusted root CA prior to insertion into Pluto's chained list.
1832 - replaced the --assign option by the -v option in the auto awk script
1833 in order to make it run with mawk under debian/woody.
1839 - Split of the status information between ipsec auto --status (concise)
1840 and ipsec auto --statusall (verbose). Both commands can be used with
1841 an optional connection selector:
1843 ipsec auto --status[all] <connection_name>
1845 - Added the description of X.509 related features to the ipsec_auto(8)
1848 - Hardened the ASN.1 parser in debug mode, especially the printing
1849 of malformed distinguished names.
1851 - The size of an RSA public key received in a certificate is now restricted to
1853 512 bits <= modulus length <= 8192 bits.
1855 - Fixed the debug mode enumeration.
1861 - Fixed another PKCS#7 vulnerability which could lead to an
1862 endless loop while following the X.509 trust chain.
1868 - Fixed the PKCS#7 vulnerability discovered by Thomas Walpuski
1869 that accepted end certificates having identical issuer and subject
1870 distinguished names in a multi-tier X.509 trust chain.
1876 - Removed all remaining references to ipsec_netlink.h in KLIPS.
1882 - The new "ca" section allows to define the following parameters:
1885 cacert=koolCA.pem # cacert of kool CA
1886 ocspuri=http://ocsp.kool.net:8001 # ocsp server
1887 ldapserver=ldap.kool.net # default ldap server
1888 crluri=http://www.kool.net/kool.crl # crl distribution point
1889 crluri2="ldap:///O=Kool, C= .." # crl distribution point #2
1890 auto=add # add, ignore
1892 The ca definitions can be monitored via the command
1894 ipsec auto --listcainfos
1896 - Fixed cosmetic corruption of /proc filesystem by integrating
1897 D. Hugh Redelmeier's freeswan-2.06 kernel fixes.
1903 - Added support for the 818043 NAT-Traversal update of Microsoft's
1904 Windows 2000/XP IPsec client which sends an ID_FQDN during Quick Mode.
1906 - A symbolic link to libcrypto is now added in the kernel sources
1907 during kernel compilation
1909 - Fixed a couple of 64 bit issues (mostly casts to int).
1910 Thanks to Ken Bantoft who checked my sources on a 64 bit platform.
1912 - Replaced s[n]printf() statements in the kernel by ipsec_snprintf().
1913 Credits go to D. Hugh Redelmeier, Michael Richardson, and Sam Sgro
1914 of the FreeS/WAN team who solved this problem with the 2.4.25 kernel.
1920 - an empty ASN.1 SEQUENCE OF or SET OF object (e.g. a subjectAltName
1921 certificate extension which contains no generalName item) can cause
1922 a pluto crash. This bug has been fixed. Additionally the ASN.1 parser has
1923 been hardened to make it more robust against malformed ASN.1 objects.
1925 - applied Herbert Xu's NAT-T patches which fixes NAT-T under the native
1926 Linux 2.6 IPsec stack.
1932 - based on freeswan-2.04, x509-1.5.3, nat-0.6c, alg-0.8.1rc12