4 - Support of Diffie-Hellman group 31 using Curve25519 for IKE as defined
7 - Support of Ed25519 digital signature algorithm for IKEv2 as defined by
8 draft-ietf-ipsecme-eddsa. Ed25519-based public key pairs, X.509 certificates
9 and CRLs can be generated and printed by the pki tool.
11 - The new "tpm" libtpmtss plugin allows to use persistent private RSA and ECDSA
12 keys bound to a TPM 2.0 for both IKE and TLS authentication. Using the
13 TPM 2.0 object handle as keyid parameter, the pki --pub tool can extract
14 the public key from the TPM thereby replacing the aikpub2 tool. In a similar
15 fashion pki --req can generate a PKCS#10 certificate request signed with
18 - The pki tool gained support for generating certificates with the RFC 3779
19 addrblock extension. The charon addrblock plugin now dynamically narrows
20 traffic selectors based on the certificate addrblocks instead of rejecting
21 non-matching selectors completely. This allows generic connections, where
22 the allowed selectors are defined by the used certificates only.
24 - In-place update of cached base and delta CRLs does not leave dozens
25 of stale copies in cache memory.
27 - Several new features for the VICI interface and the swanctl utility: Querying
28 specific pools, enumerating and unloading keys and shared secrets, loading
29 keys and certificates from PKCS#11 tokens, the ability to initiate, install
30 and uninstall connections and policies by their exact name (if multiple child
31 sections in different connections share the same name), a command to initiate
32 the rekeying of IKE and IPsec SAs, support for settings previously only
33 supported by the old config files (plain pubkeys, dscp, certificate policies,
34 IPv6 Transport Proxy Mode, NT Hash secrets, mediation extension).
36 Important: Due to issues with VICI bindings that map sub-sections to
37 dictionaries the CHILD_SA sections returned via list-sas now have a unique
38 name, the original name of a CHILD_SA is returned in the "name" key of its
45 - The newhope plugin implements the post-quantum NewHope key exchange algorithm
46 proposed in their 2015 paper by Erdem Alkim, Léo Ducas, Thomas Pöppelmann and
49 - The libstrongswan crypto factory now offers the registration of Extended
50 Output Functions (XOFs). Currently supported XOFs are SHAKE128 and SHAKE256
51 implemented by the sha3 plugin, ChaCHa20 implemented by the chapoly plugin
52 and the more traditional MGF1 Mask Generation Functions based on the SHA-1,
53 SHA-256 and SHA-512 hash algorithms implemented by the new mgf1 plugin.
55 - The pki tool, with help of the pkcs1 or openssl plugins, can parse private
56 keys in any of the supported formats without having to know the exact type.
57 So instead of having to specify rsa or ecdsa explicitly the keyword priv may
58 be used to indicate a private key of any type. Similarly, swanctl can load
59 any type of private key from the swanctl/private directory.
61 - The pki tool can handle RSASSA-PKCS1v1.5-with-SHA-3 signatures using the
64 - The VICI flush-certs command flushes certificates from the volatile
65 certificate cache. Optionally the type of the certificates to be
66 flushed (e.g. type = x509_crl) can be specified.
68 - Setting cache_crls = yes in strongswan.conf the vici plugin saves regular,
69 base and delta CRLs to disk.
71 - IKE fragmentation is now enabled by default with the default fragment size
72 set to 1280 bytes for both IP address families.
74 - libtpmtss: In the TSS2 API the function TeardownSocketTcti() was replaced by
81 - The new libtpmtss library offers support for both TPM 1.2 and TPM 2.0
82 Trusted Platform Modules. This allows the Attestation IMC/IMV pair to
83 do TPM 2.0 based attestation.
85 - The behavior during IKEv2 exchange collisions has been improved/fixed in
86 several corner cases and support for TEMPORARY_FAILURE and CHILD_SA_NOT_FOUND
87 notifies, as defined by RFC 7296, has been added.
89 - IPsec policy priorities can be set manually (e.g. for high-priority drop
90 policies) and outbound policies may be restricted to a network interface.
92 - The scheme for the automatically calculated default priorities has been
93 changed and now also considers port masks, which were added with 5.4.0.
95 - FWD policies are now installed in both directions in regards to the traffic
96 selectors. Because such "outbound" FWD policies could conflict with "inbound"
97 FWD policies of other SAs they are installed with a lower priority and don't
98 have a reqid set, which allows kernel plugins to distinguish between the two
99 and prefer those with a reqid.
101 - For outbound IPsec SAs no replay window is configured anymore.
103 - Enhanced the functionality of the swanctl --list-conns command by listing
104 IKE_SA and CHILD_SA reauthentication and rekeying settings, and EAP/XAuth
105 identities and EAP types.
107 - DNS servers installed by the resolve plugin are now refcounted, which should
108 fix its use with make-before-break reauthentication. Any output written to
109 stderr/stdout by resolvconf is now logged.
111 - The methods in the kernel interfaces have been changed to take structs instead
112 of long lists of arguments. Similarly the constructors for peer_cfg_t and
113 child_cfg_t now take structs.
119 - Support for IKEv2 redirection (RFC 5685) has been added. Plugins may
120 implement the redirect_provider_t interface to decide if and when to redirect
121 connecting clients. It is also possible to redirect established IKE_SAs based
122 on different selectors via VICI/swanctl. Unless disabled in strongswan.conf
123 the charon daemon will follow redirect requests received from servers.
125 - The ike: prefix enables the explicit configuration of signature scheme
126 constraints against IKEv2 authentication in rightauth, which allows the use
127 of different signature schemes for trustchain verification and authentication.
129 - The initiator of an IKEv2 make-before-break reauthentication now suspends
130 online certificate revocation checks (OCSP, CRLs) until the new IKE_SA and all
131 CHILD_SAs are established. This is required if the checks are done over the
132 CHILD_SA established with the new IKE_SA. This is not possible until the
133 initiator installs this SA and that only happens after the authentication is
134 completed successfully. So we suspend the checks during the reauthentication
135 and do them afterwards, if they fail the IKE_SA is closed. This change has no
136 effect on the behavior during the authentication of the initial IKE_SA.
138 - For the vici plugin a Vici:Session Perl CPAN module has been added to allow
139 Perl applications to control and/or monitor the IKE daemon using the VICI
140 interface, similar to the existing Python egg or Ruby gem.
142 - Traffic selectors with port ranges can now be configured in the Linux kernel:
143 e.g. remote_ts = 10.1.0.0/16[tcp/20-23] local_ts = dynamic[tcp/32768-65535].
144 The port range must map to a port mask, though since the kernel does not
145 support arbitrary ranges.
147 - The vici plugin allows the configuration of IPv4 and IPv6 address ranges
148 in local and remote traffic selectors. Since both the Linux kernel and
149 iptables cannot handle arbitrary ranges, address ranges are mapped to the next
150 larger CIDR subnet by the kernel-netlink and updown plugins, respectively.
152 - Implemented IKEv1 IPv4/IPv6 address subnet and range identities that can be
153 used as owners of shared secrets.
159 - Properly handle potential EINTR errors in sigwaitinfo(2) calls that replaced
160 sigwait(3) calls with 5.3.4.
162 - RADIUS retransmission timeouts are now configurable, courtesy of Thom Troy.
168 - Fixed an authentication bypass vulnerability in the eap-mschapv2 plugin that
169 was caused by insufficient verification of the internal state when handling
170 MSCHAPv2 Success messages received by the client.
171 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2015-8023.
173 - The sha3 plugin implements the SHA3 Keccak-F1600 hash algorithm family.
174 Within the strongSwan framework SHA3 is currently used for BLISS signatures
175 only because the OIDs for other signature algorithms haven't been defined
176 yet. Also the use of SHA3 for IKEv2 has not been standardized yet.
182 - Added support for the ChaCha20/Poly1305 AEAD cipher specified in RFC 7539 and
183 RFC 7634 using the chacha20poly1305 ike/esp proposal keyword. The new chapoly
184 plugin implements the cipher, if possible SSE-accelerated on x86/x64
185 architectures. It is usable both in IKEv2 and the strongSwan libipsec ESP
186 backend. On Linux 4.2 or newer the kernel-netlink plugin can configure the
189 - The vici interface now supports the configuration of auxiliary certification
190 authority information as CRL and OCSP URIs.
192 - In the bliss plugin the c_indices derivation using a SHA-512 based random
193 oracle has been fixed, generalized and standardized by employing the MGF1 mask
194 generation function with SHA-512. As a consequence BLISS signatures unsing the
195 improved oracle are not compatible with the earlier implementation.
197 - Support for auto=route with right=%any for transport mode connections has
198 been added (the ikev2/trap-any scenario provides examples).
200 - The starter daemon does not flush IPsec policies and SAs anymore when it is
201 stopped. Already existing duplicate policies are now overwritten by the IKE
202 daemon when it installs its policies.
204 - Init limits (like charon.init_limit_half_open) can now optionally be enforced
205 when initiating SAs via VICI. For this, IKE_SAs initiated by the daemon are
206 now also counted as half-open SAs, which, as a side-effect, fixes the status
207 output while connecting (e.g. in ipsec status).
209 - Symmetric configuration of EAP methods in left|rightauth is now possible when
210 mutual EAP-only authentication is used (previously, the client had to
211 configure rightauth=eap or rightauth=any, which prevented it from using this
212 same config as responder).
214 - The initiator flag in the IKEv2 header is compared again (wasn't the case
215 since 5.0.0) and packets that have the flag set incorrectly are again ignored.
217 - Implemented a demo Hardcopy Device IMC/IMV pair based on the "Hardcopy
218 Device Health Assessment Trusted Network Connect Binding" (HCD-TNC)
219 document drafted by the IEEE Printer Working Group (PWG).
221 - Fixed IF-M segmentation which failed in the presence of multiple small
222 attributes in front of a huge attribute to be segmented.
228 - Fixed a vulnerability that allowed rogue servers with a valid certificate
229 accepted by the client to trick it into disclosing its username and even
230 password (if the client accepts EAP-GTC). This was caused because constraints
231 against the responder's authentication were enforced too late.
232 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2015-4171.
238 - Fixed a denial-of-service and potential remote code execution vulnerability
239 triggered by IKEv1/IKEv2 messages that contain payloads for the respective
240 other IKE version. Such payload are treated specially since 5.2.2 but because
241 they were still identified by their original payload type they were used as
242 such in some places causing invalid function pointer dereferences.
243 The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2015-3991.
245 - The new aesni plugin provides CBC, CTR, XCBC, CMAC, CCM and GCM crypto
246 primitives for AES-128/192/256. The plugin requires AES-NI and PCLMULQDQ
247 instructions and works on both x86 and x64 architectures. It provides
248 superior crypto performance in userland without any external libraries.
254 - Added support for IKEv2 make-before-break reauthentication. By using a global
255 CHILD_SA reqid allocation mechanism, charon supports overlapping CHILD_SAs.
256 This allows the use of make-before-break instead of the previously supported
257 break-before-make reauthentication, avoiding connectivity gaps during that
258 procedure. As the new mechanism may fail with peers not supporting it (such
259 as any previous strongSwan release) it must be explicitly enabled using
260 the charon.make_before_break strongswan.conf option.
262 - Support for "Signature Authentication in IKEv2" (RFC 7427) has been added.
263 This allows the use of stronger hash algorithms for public key authentication.
264 By default, signature schemes are chosen based on the strength of the
265 signature key, but specific hash algorithms may be configured in leftauth.
267 - Key types and hash algorithms specified in rightauth are now also checked
268 against IKEv2 signature schemes. If such constraints are used for certificate
269 chain validation in existing configurations, in particular with peers that
270 don't support RFC 7427, it may be necessary to disable this feature with the
271 charon.signature_authentication_constraints setting, because the signature
272 scheme used in classic IKEv2 public key authentication may not be strong
275 - The new connmark plugin allows a host to bind conntrack flows to a specific
276 CHILD_SA by applying and restoring the SA mark to conntrack entries. This
277 allows a peer to handle multiple transport mode connections coming over the
278 same NAT device for client-initiated flows. A common use case is to protect
279 L2TP/IPsec, as supported by some systems.
281 - The forecast plugin can forward broadcast and multicast messages between
282 connected clients and a LAN. For CHILD_SA using unique marks, it sets up
283 the required Netfilter rules and uses a multicast/broadcast listener that
284 forwards such messages to all connected clients. This plugin is designed for
285 Windows 7 IKEv2 clients, which announces its services over the tunnel if the
286 negotiated IPsec policy allows it.
288 - For the vici plugin a Python Egg has been added to allow Python applications
289 to control or monitor the IKE daemon using the VICI interface, similar to the
290 existing ruby gem. The Python library has been contributed by Björn Schuberg.
292 - EAP server methods now can fulfill public key constraints, such as rightcert
293 or rightca. Additionally, public key and signature constraints can be
294 specified for EAP methods in the rightauth keyword. Currently the EAP-TLS and
295 EAP-TTLS methods provide verification details to constraints checking.
297 - Upgrade of the BLISS post-quantum signature algorithm to the improved BLISS-B
298 variant. Can be used in conjunction with the SHA256, SHA384 and SHA512 hash
299 algorithms with SHA512 being the default.
301 - The IF-IMV 1.4 interface now makes the IP address of the TNC access requestor
302 as seen by the TNC server available to all IMVs. This information can be
303 forwarded to policy enforcement points (e.g. firewalls or routers).
305 - The new mutual tnccs-20 plugin parameter activates mutual TNC measurements
306 in PB-TNC half-duplex mode between two endpoints over either a PT-EAP or
307 PT-TLS transport medium.
313 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by an IKEv2 Key Exchange
314 payload that contains the Diffie-Hellman group 1025. This identifier was
315 used internally for DH groups with custom generator and prime. Because
316 these arguments are missing when creating DH objects based on the KE payload
317 an invalid pointer dereference occurred. This allowed an attacker to crash
318 the IKE daemon with a single IKE_SA_INIT message containing such a KE
319 payload. The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2014-9221.
321 - The left/rightid options in ipsec.conf, or any other identity in strongSwan,
322 now accept prefixes to enforce an explicit type, such as email: or fqdn:.
323 Note that no conversion is done for the remaining string, refer to
324 ipsec.conf(5) for details.
326 - The post-quantum Bimodal Lattice Signature Scheme (BLISS) can be used as
327 an IKEv2 public key authentication method. The pki tool offers full support
328 for the generation of BLISS key pairs and certificates.
330 - Fixed mapping of integrity algorithms negotiated for AH via IKEv1. This could
331 cause interoperability issues when connecting to older versions of charon.
337 - The new charon-systemd IKE daemon implements an IKE daemon tailored for use
338 with systemd. It avoids the dependency on ipsec starter and uses swanctl
339 as configuration backend, building a simple and lightweight solution. It
340 supports native systemd journal logging.
342 - Support for IKEv2 fragmentation as per RFC 7383 has been added. Like IKEv1
343 fragmentation it can be enabled by setting fragmentation=yes in ipsec.conf.
345 - Support of the TCG TNC IF-M Attribute Segmentation specification proposal.
346 All attributes can be segmented. Additionally TCG/SWID Tag, TCG/SWID Tag ID
347 and IETF/Installed Packages attributes can be processed incrementally on a
350 - The new ext-auth plugin calls an external script to implement custom IKE_SA
351 authorization logic, courtesy of Vyronas Tsingaras.
353 - For the vici plugin a ruby gem has been added to allow ruby applications
354 to control or monitor the IKE daemon. The vici documentation has been updated
355 to include a description of the available operations and some simple examples
356 using both the libvici C interface and the ruby gem.
362 - strongSwan has been ported to the Windows platform. Using a MinGW toolchain,
363 many parts of the strongSwan codebase run natively on Windows 7 / 2008 R2
364 and newer releases. charon-svc implements a Windows IKE service based on
365 libcharon, the kernel-iph and kernel-wfp plugins act as networking and IPsec
366 backend on the Windows platform. socket-win provides a native IKE socket
367 implementation, while winhttp fetches CRL and OCSP information using the
370 - The new vici plugin provides a Versatile IKE Configuration Interface for
371 charon. Using the stable IPC interface, external applications can configure,
372 control and monitor the IKE daemon. Instead of scripting the ipsec tool
373 and generating ipsec.conf, third party applications can use the new interface
374 for more control and better reliability.
376 - Built upon the libvici client library, swanctl implements the first user of
377 the VICI interface. Together with a swanctl.conf configuration file,
378 connections can be defined, loaded and managed. swanctl provides a portable,
379 complete IKE configuration and control interface for the command line.
380 The first six swanctl example scenarios have been added.
382 - The SWID IMV implements a JSON-based REST API which allows the exchange
383 of SWID tags and Software IDs with the strongTNC policy manager.
385 - The SWID IMC can extract all installed packages from the dpkg (Debian,
386 Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc.), rpm (Fedora, RedHat, OpenSUSE, etc.), or
387 pacman (Arch Linux, Manjaro, etc.) package managers, respectively, using the
388 swidGenerator (https://github.com/strongswan/swidGenerator) which generates
389 SWID tags according to the new ISO/IEC 19770-2:2014 standard.
391 - All IMVs now share the access requestor ID, device ID and product info
392 of an access requestor via a common imv_session object.
394 - The Attestation IMC/IMV pair supports the IMA-NG measurement format
395 introduced with the Linux 3.13 kernel.
397 - The aikgen tool generates an Attestation Identity Key bound to a TPM.
399 - Implemented the PT-EAP transport protocol (RFC 7171) for Trusted Network
402 - The ipsec.conf replay_window option defines connection specific IPsec replay
403 windows. Original patch courtesy of Zheng Zhong and Christophe Gouault from
410 - Fixed an authentication bypass vulnerability triggered by rekeying an
411 unestablished IKEv2 SA while it gets actively initiated. This allowed an
412 attacker to trick a peer's IKE_SA state to established, without the need to
413 provide any valid authentication credentials. The vulnerability has been
414 registered as CVE-2014-2338.
416 - The acert plugin evaluates X.509 Attribute Certificates. Group membership
417 information encoded as strings can be used to fulfill authorization checks
418 defined with the rightgroups option. Attribute Certificates can be loaded
419 locally or get exchanged in IKEv2 certificate payloads.
421 - The pki command gained support to generate X.509 Attribute Certificates
422 using the --acert subcommand, while the --print command supports the ac type.
423 The openac utility has been removed in favor of the new pki functionality.
425 - The libtls TLS 1.2 implementation as used by EAP-(T)TLS and other protocols
426 has been extended by AEAD mode support, currently limited to AES-GCM.
432 - A new default configuration file layout is introduced. The new default
433 strongswan.conf file mainly includes config snippets from the strongswan.d
434 and strongswan.d/charon directories (the latter containing snippets for all
435 plugins). The snippets, with commented defaults, are automatically
436 generated and installed, if they don't exist yet. They are also installed
437 in $prefix/share/strongswan/templates so existing files can be compared to
438 the current defaults.
440 - As an alternative to the non-extensible charon.load setting, the plugins
441 to load in charon (and optionally other applications) can now be determined
442 via the charon.plugins.<name>.load setting for each plugin (enabled in the
443 new default strongswan.conf file via the charon.load_modular option).
444 The load setting optionally takes a numeric priority value that allows
445 reordering the plugins (otherwise the default plugin order is preserved).
447 - All strongswan.conf settings that were formerly defined in library specific
448 "global" sections are now application specific (e.g. settings for plugins in
449 libstrongswan.plugins can now be set only for charon in charon.plugins).
450 The old options are still supported, which now allows to define defaults for
451 all applications in the libstrongswan section.
453 - The ntru libstrongswan plugin supports NTRUEncrypt as a post-quantum
454 computer IKE key exchange mechanism. The implementation is based on the
455 ntru-crypto library from the NTRUOpenSourceProject. The supported security
456 strengths are ntru112, ntru128, ntru192, and ntru256. Since the private DH
457 group IDs 1030..1033 have been assigned, the strongSwan Vendor ID must be
458 sent (charon.send_vendor_id = yes) in order to use NTRU.
460 - Defined a TPMRA remote attestation workitem and added support for it to the
463 - Compatibility issues between IPComp (compress=yes) and leftfirewall=yes as
464 well as multiple subnets in left|rightsubnet have been fixed.
466 - When enabling its "session" strongswan.conf option, the xauth-pam plugin opens
467 and closes a PAM session for each established IKE_SA. Patch courtesy of
470 - The strongSwan unit testing framework has been rewritten without the "check"
471 dependency for improved flexibility and portability. It now properly supports
472 multi-threaded and memory leak testing and brings a bunch of new test cases.
478 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability and potential authorization bypass
479 triggered by a crafted ID_DER_ASN1_DN ID payload. The cause is an insufficient
480 length check when comparing such identities. The vulnerability has been
481 registered as CVE-2013-6075.
483 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by a crafted IKEv1
484 fragmentation payload. The cause is a NULL pointer dereference. The
485 vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-6076.
487 - The lean stand-alone pt-tls-client can set up a RFC 6876 PT-TLS session
488 with a strongSwan policy enforcement point which uses the tnc-pdp charon
491 - The new TCG TNC SWID IMC/IMV pair supports targeted SWID requests for either
492 full SWID Tag or concise SWID Tag ID inventories.
494 - The XAuth backend in eap-radius now supports multiple XAuth exchanges for
495 different credential types and display messages. All user input gets
496 concatenated and verified with a single User-Password RADIUS attribute on
497 the AAA. With an AAA supporting it, one for example can implement
498 Password+Token authentication with proper dialogs on iOS and OS X clients.
500 - charon supports IKEv1 Mode Config exchange in push mode. The ipsec.conf
501 modeconfig=push option enables it for both client and server, the same way
504 - Using the "ah" ipsec.conf keyword on both IKEv1 and IKEv2 connections,
505 charon can negotiate and install Security Associations integrity-protected by
506 the Authentication Header protocol. Supported are plain AH(+IPComp) SAs only,
507 but not the deprecated RFC2401 style ESP+AH bundles.
509 - The generation of initialization vectors for IKE and ESP (when using libipsec)
510 is now modularized and IVs for e.g. AES-GCM are now correctly allocated
511 sequentially, while other algorithms like AES-CBC still use random IVs.
513 - The left and right options in ipsec.conf can take multiple address ranges
514 and subnets. This allows connection matching against a larger set of
515 addresses, for example to use a different connection for clients connecting
516 from a internal network.
518 - For all those who have a queasy feeling about the NIST elliptic curve set,
519 the Brainpool curves introduced for use with IKE by RFC 6932 might be a
520 more trustworthy alternative.
522 - The kernel-libipsec userland IPsec backend now supports usage statistics,
523 volume based rekeying and accepts ESPv3 style TFC padded packets.
525 - With two new strongswan.conf options fwmarks can be used to implement
526 host-to-host tunnels with kernel-libipsec.
528 - load-tester supports transport mode connections and more complex traffic
529 selectors, including such using unique ports for each tunnel.
531 - The new dnscert plugin provides support for authentication via CERT RRs that
532 are protected via DNSSEC. The plugin was created by Ruslan N. Marchenko.
534 - The eap-radius plugin supports forwarding of several Cisco Unity specific
535 RADIUS attributes in corresponding configuration payloads.
537 - Database transactions are now abstracted and implemented by the two backends.
538 If you use MySQL make sure all tables use the InnoDB engine.
540 - libstrongswan now can provide an experimental custom implementation of the
541 printf family functions based on klibc if neither Vstr nor glibc style printf
542 hooks are available. This can avoid the Vstr dependency on some systems at
543 the cost of slower and less complete printf functions.
549 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by specific XAuth usernames
550 and EAP identities (since 5.0.3), and PEM files (since 4.1.11). The crash
551 was caused by insufficient error handling in the is_asn1() function.
552 The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-5018.
554 - The new charon-cmd command line IKE client can establish road warrior
555 connections using IKEv1 or IKEv2 with different authentication profiles.
556 It does not depend on any configuration files and can be configured using a
557 few simple command line options.
559 - The kernel-pfroute networking backend has been greatly improved. It now
560 can install virtual IPs on TUN devices on OS X and FreeBSD, allowing these
561 systems to act as a client in common road warrior scenarios.
563 - The new kernel-libipsec plugin uses TUN devices and libipsec to provide IPsec
564 processing in userland on Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
566 - The eap-radius plugin can now serve as an XAuth backend called xauth-radius,
567 directly verifying XAuth credentials using RADIUS User-Name/User-Password
568 attributes. This is more efficient than the existing xauth-eap+eap-radius
569 combination, and allows RADIUS servers without EAP support to act as AAA
572 - The new osx-attr plugin installs configuration attributes (currently DNS
573 servers) via SystemConfiguration on Mac OS X. The keychain plugin provides
574 certificates from the OS X keychain service.
576 - The sshkey plugin parses SSH public keys, which, together with the --agent
577 option for charon-cmd, allows the use of ssh-agent for authentication.
578 To configure SSH keys in ipsec.conf the left|rightrsasigkey options are
579 replaced with left|rightsigkey, which now take public keys in one of three
580 formats: SSH (RFC 4253, ssh: prefix), DNSKEY (RFC 3110, dns: prefix), and
581 PKCS#1 (the default, no prefix).
583 - Extraction of certificates and private keys from PKCS#12 files is now provided
584 by the new pkcs12 plugin or the openssl plugin. charon-cmd (--p12) as well
585 as charon (via P12 token in ipsec.secrets) can make use of this.
587 - IKEv2 can now negotiate transport mode and IPComp in NAT situations.
589 - IKEv2 exchange initiators now properly close an established IKE or CHILD_SA
590 on error conditions using an additional exchange, keeping state in sync
593 - Using a SQL database interface a Trusted Network Connect (TNC) Policy Manager
594 can generate specific measurement workitems for an arbitrary number of
595 Integrity Measurement Verifiers (IMVs) based on the history of the VPN user
598 - Several core classes in libstrongswan are now tested with unit tests. These
599 can be enabled with --enable-unit-tests and run with 'make check'. Coverage
600 reports can be generated with --enable-coverage and 'make coverage' (this
601 disables any optimization, so it should not be enabled when building
602 production releases).
604 - The leak-detective developer tool has been greatly improved. It works much
605 faster/stabler with multiple threads, does not use deprecated malloc hooks
606 anymore and has been ported to OS X.
608 - chunk_hash() is now based on SipHash-2-4 with a random key. This provides
609 better distribution and prevents hash flooding attacks when used with
612 - All default plugins implement the get_features() method to define features
613 and their dependencies. The plugin loader has been improved, so that plugins
614 in a custom load statement can be ordered freely or to express preferences
615 without being affected by dependencies between plugin features.
617 - A centralized thread can take care for watching multiple file descriptors
618 concurrently. This removes the need for a dedicated listener threads in
619 various plugins. The number of "reserved" threads for such tasks has been
620 reduced to about five, depending on the plugin configuration.
622 - Plugins that can be controlled by a UNIX socket IPC mechanism gained network
623 transparency. Third party applications querying these plugins now can use
624 TCP connections from a different host.
626 - libipsec now supports AES-GCM.
632 - Fixed a security vulnerability in the openssl plugin which was reported by
633 Kevin Wojtysiak. The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-2944.
634 Before the fix, if the openssl plugin's ECDSA signature verification was used,
635 due to a misinterpretation of the error code returned by the OpenSSL
636 ECDSA_verify() function, an empty or zeroed signature was accepted as a
639 - The handling of a couple of other non-security relevant openssl return codes
642 - The tnc_ifmap plugin now publishes virtual IPv4 and IPv6 addresses via its
643 TCG TNC IF-MAP 2.1 interface.
645 - The charon.initiator_only option causes charon to ignore IKE initiation
648 - The openssl plugin can now use the openssl-fips library.
654 - The new ipseckey plugin enables authentication based on trustworthy public
655 keys stored as IPSECKEY resource records in the DNS and protected by DNSSEC.
656 To do so it uses a DNSSEC enabled resolver, like the one provided by the new
657 unbound plugin, which is based on libldns and libunbound. Both plugins were
658 created by Reto Guadagnini.
660 - Implemented the TCG TNC IF-IMV 1.4 draft making access requestor identities
661 available to an IMV. The OS IMV stores the AR identity together with the
662 device ID in the attest database.
664 - The openssl plugin now uses the AES-NI accelerated version of AES-GCM
665 if the hardware supports it.
667 - The eap-radius plugin can now assign virtual IPs to IKE clients using the
668 Framed-IP-Address attribute by using the "%radius" named pool in the
669 rightsourceip ipsec.conf option. Cisco Banner attributes are forwarded to
670 Unity-capable IKEv1 clients during mode config. charon now sends Interim
671 Accounting updates if requested by the RADIUS server, reports
672 sent/received packets in Accounting messages, and adds a Terminate-Cause
675 - The recently introduced "ipsec listcounters" command can report connection
676 specific counters by passing a connection name, and global or connection
677 counters can be reset by the "ipsec resetcounters" command.
679 - The strongSwan libpttls library provides an experimental implementation of
680 PT-TLS (RFC 6876), a Posture Transport Protocol over TLS.
682 - The charon systime-fix plugin can disable certificate lifetime checks on
683 embedded systems if the system time is obviously out of sync after bootup.
684 Certificates lifetimes get checked once the system time gets sane, closing
685 or reauthenticating connections using expired certificates.
687 - The "ikedscp" ipsec.conf option can set DiffServ code points on outgoing
690 - The new xauth-noauth plugin allows to use basic RSA or PSK authentication with
691 clients that cannot be configured without XAuth authentication. The plugin
692 simply concludes the XAuth exchange successfully without actually performing
693 any authentication. Therefore, to use this backend it has to be selected
694 explicitly with rightauth2=xauth-noauth.
696 - The new charon-tkm IKEv2 daemon delegates security critical operations to a
697 separate process. This has the benefit that the network facing daemon has no
698 knowledge of keying material used to protect child SAs. Thus subverting
699 charon-tkm does not result in the compromise of cryptographic keys.
700 The extracted functionality has been implemented from scratch in a minimal TCB
701 (trusted computing base) in the Ada programming language. Further information
702 can be found at http://www.codelabs.ch/tkm/.
707 - Implemented all IETF Standard PA-TNC attributes and an OS IMC/IMV
708 pair using them to transfer operating system information.
710 - The new "ipsec listcounters" command prints a list of global counter values
711 about received and sent IKE messages and rekeyings.
713 - A new lookip plugin can perform fast lookup of tunnel information using a
714 clients virtual IP and can send notifications about established or deleted
715 tunnels. The "ipsec lookip" command can be used to query such information
716 or receive notifications.
718 - The new error-notify plugin catches some common error conditions and allows
719 an external application to receive notifications for them over a UNIX socket.
721 - IKE proposals can now use a PRF algorithm different to that defined for
722 integrity protection. If an algorithm with a "prf" prefix is defined
723 explicitly (such as prfsha1 or prfsha256), no implicit PRF algorithm based on
724 the integrity algorithm is added to the proposal.
726 - The pkcs11 plugin can now load leftcert certificates from a smartcard for a
727 specific ipsec.conf conn section and cacert CA certificates for a specific ca
730 - The load-tester plugin gained additional options for certificate generation
731 and can load keys and multiple CA certificates from external files. It can
732 install a dedicated outer IP address for each tunnel and tunnel initiation
733 batches can be triggered and monitored externally using the
734 "ipsec load-tester" tool.
736 - PKCS#7 container parsing has been modularized, and the openssl plugin
737 gained an alternative implementation to decrypt and verify such files.
738 In contrast to our own DER parser, OpenSSL can handle BER files, which is
739 required for interoperability of our scepclient with EJBCA.
741 - Support for the proprietary IKEv1 fragmentation extension has been added.
742 Fragments are always handled on receipt but only sent if supported by the peer
743 and if enabled with the new fragmentation ipsec.conf option.
745 - IKEv1 in charon can now parse certificates received in PKCS#7 containers and
746 supports NAT traversal as used by Windows clients. Patches courtesy of
749 - The new rdrand plugin provides a high quality / high performance random
750 source using the Intel rdrand instruction found on Ivy Bridge processors.
752 - The integration test environment was updated and now uses KVM and reproducible
753 guest images based on Debian.
759 - Introduced the sending of the standard IETF Assessment Result
760 PA-TNC attribute by all strongSwan Integrity Measurement Verifiers.
762 - Extended PTS Attestation IMC/IMV pair to provide full evidence of
763 the Linux IMA measurement process. All pertinent file information
764 of a Linux OS can be collected and stored in an SQL database.
766 - The PA-TNC and PB-TNC protocols can now process huge data payloads
767 >64 kB by distributing PA-TNC attributes over multiple PA-TNC messages
768 and these messages over several PB-TNC batches. As long as no
769 consolidated recommandation from all IMVs can be obtained, the TNC
770 server requests more client data by sending an empty SDATA batch.
772 - The rightgroups2 ipsec.conf option can require group membership during
773 a second authentication round, for example during XAuth authentication
774 against a RADIUS server.
776 - The xauth-pam backend can authenticate IKEv1 XAuth and Hybrid authenticated
777 clients against any PAM service. The IKEv2 eap-gtc plugin does not use
778 PAM directly anymore, but can use any XAuth backend to verify credentials,
781 - The new unity plugin brings support for some parts of the IKEv1 Cisco Unity
782 Extension. As client, charon narrows traffic selectors to the received
783 Split-Include attributes and automatically installs IPsec bypass policies
784 for received Local-LAN attributes. As server, charon sends Split-Include
785 attributes for leftsubnet definitions containing multiple subnets to Unity-
788 - An EAP-Nak payload is returned by clients if the gateway requests an EAP
789 method that the client does not support. Clients can also request a specific
790 EAP method by configuring that method with leftauth.
792 - The eap-dynamic plugin handles EAP-Nak payloads returned by clients and uses
793 these to select a different EAP method supported/requested by the client.
794 The plugin initially requests the first registered method or the first method
795 configured with charon.plugins.eap-dynamic.preferred.
797 - The new left/rightdns options specify connection specific DNS servers to
798 request/respond in IKEv2 configuration payloads or IKEv2 mode config. leftdns
799 can be any (comma separated) combination of %config4 and %config6 to request
800 multiple servers, both for IPv4 and IPv6. rightdns takes a list of DNS server
801 IP addresses to return.
803 - The left/rightsourceip options now accept multiple addresses or pools.
804 leftsourceip can be any (comma separated) combination of %config4, %config6
805 or fixed IP addresses to request. rightsourceip accepts multiple explicitly
806 specified or referenced named pools.
808 - Multiple connections can now share a single address pool when they use the
809 same definition in one of the rightsourceip pools.
811 - The options charon.interfaces_ignore and charon.interfaces_use allow one to
812 configure the network interfaces used by the daemon.
814 - The kernel-netlink plugin supports the charon.install_virtual_ip_on option,
815 which specifies the interface on which virtual IP addresses will be installed.
816 If it is not specified the current behavior of using the outbound interface
819 - The kernel-netlink plugin tries to keep the current source address when
820 looking for valid routes to reach other hosts.
822 - The autotools build has been migrated to use a config.h header. strongSwan
823 development headers will get installed during "make install" if
824 --with-dev-headers has been passed to ./configure.
826 - All crypto primitives gained return values for most operations, allowing
827 crypto backends to fail, for example when using hardware accelerators.
833 - The charon IKE daemon gained experimental support for the IKEv1 protocol.
834 Pluto has been removed from the 5.x series, and unless strongSwan is
835 configured with --disable-ikev1 or --disable-ikev2, charon handles both
836 keying protocols. The feature-set of IKEv1 in charon is almost on par with
837 pluto, but currently does not support AH or bundled AH+ESP SAs. Beside
838 RSA/ECDSA, PSK and XAuth, charon also supports the Hybrid authentication
839 mode. Informations for interoperability and migration is available at
840 http://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/CharonPlutoIKEv1.
842 - Charon's bus_t has been refactored so that loggers and other listeners are
843 now handled separately. The single lock was previously cause for deadlocks
844 if extensive listeners, such as the one provided by the updown plugin, wanted
845 to acquire locks that were held by other threads which in turn tried to log
846 messages, and thus were waiting to acquire the same lock currently held by
847 the thread calling the listener.
848 The implemented changes also allow the use of a read/write-lock for the
849 loggers which increases performance if multiple loggers are registered.
850 Besides several interface changes this last bit also changes the semantics
851 for loggers as these may now be called by multiple threads at the same time.
853 - Source routes are reinstalled if interfaces are reactivated or IP addresses
856 - The thread pool (processor_t) now has more control over the lifecycle of
857 a job (see job.h for details). In particular, it now controls the destruction
858 of jobs after execution and the cancellation of jobs during shutdown. Due to
859 these changes the requeueing feature, previously available to callback_job_t
860 only, is now available to all jobs (in addition to a new rescheduling
863 - In addition to trustchain key strength definitions for different public key
864 systems, the rightauth option now takes a list of signature hash algorithms
865 considered save for trustchain validation. For example, the setting
866 rightauth=rsa-2048-ecdsa-256-sha256-sha384-sha512 requires a trustchain
867 that uses at least RSA-2048 or ECDSA-256 keys and certificate signatures
868 using SHA-256 or better.
874 - Fixed a security vulnerability in the gmp plugin. If this plugin was used
875 for RSA signature verification an empty or zeroed signature was handled as
878 - Fixed several issues with reauthentication and address updates.
884 - The tnc-pdp plugin implements a RADIUS server interface allowing
885 a strongSwan TNC server to act as a Policy Decision Point.
887 - The eap-radius authentication backend enforces Session-Timeout attributes
888 using RFC4478 repeated authentication and acts upon RADIUS Dynamic
889 Authorization extensions, RFC 5176. Currently supported are disconnect
890 requests and CoA messages containing a Session-Timeout.
892 - The eap-radius plugin can forward arbitrary RADIUS attributes from and to
893 clients using custom IKEv2 notify payloads. The new radattr plugin reads
894 attributes to include from files and prints received attributes to the
897 - Added support for untruncated MD5 and SHA1 HMACs in ESP as used in
900 - The cmac plugin implements the AES-CMAC-96 and AES-CMAC-PRF-128 algorithms
901 as defined in RFC 4494 and RFC 4615, respectively.
903 - The resolve plugin automatically installs nameservers via resolvconf(8),
904 if it is installed, instead of modifying /etc/resolv.conf directly.
906 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports now raw RSA public keys in RFC 3110
907 DNSKEY and PKCS#1 file format.
913 - Upgraded the TCG IF-IMC and IF-IMV C API to the upcoming version 1.3
914 which supports IF-TNCCS 2.0 long message types, the exclusive flags
915 and multiple IMC/IMV IDs. Both the TNC Client and Server as well as
916 the "Test", "Scanner", and "Attestation" IMC/IMV pairs were updated.
918 - Fully implemented the "TCG Attestation PTS Protocol: Binding to IF-M"
919 standard (TLV-based messages only). TPM-based remote attestation of
920 Linux IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) possible. Measurement
921 reference values are automatically stored in an SQLite database.
923 - The EAP-RADIUS authentication backend supports RADIUS accounting. It sends
924 start/stop messages containing Username, Framed-IP and Input/Output-Octets
925 attributes and has been tested against FreeRADIUS and Microsoft NPS.
927 - Added support for PKCS#8 encoded private keys via the libstrongswan
928 pkcs8 plugin. This is the default format used by some OpenSSL tools since
929 version 1.0.0 (e.g. openssl req with -keyout).
931 - Added session resumption support to the strongSwan TLS stack.
937 - Because of changing checksums before and after installation which caused
938 the integrity tests to fail we avoided directly linking libsimaka, libtls and
939 libtnccs to those libcharon plugins which make use of these dynamic libraries.
940 Instead we linked the libraries to the charon daemon. Unfortunately Ubuntu
941 11.10 activated the --as-needed ld option which discards explicit links
942 to dynamic libraries that are not actually used by the charon daemon itself,
943 thus causing failures during the loading of the plugins which depend on these
944 libraries for resolving external symbols.
946 - Therefore our approach of computing integrity checksums for plugins had to be
947 changed radically by moving the hash generation from the compilation to the
948 post-installation phase.
954 - The new libstrongswan certexpire plugin collects expiration information of
955 all used certificates and exports them to CSV files. It either directly
956 exports them or uses cron style scheduling for batch exports.
958 - starter passes unresolved hostnames to charon, allowing it to do name
959 resolution not before the connection attempt. This is especially useful with
960 connections between hosts using dynamic IP addresses. Thanks to Mirko Parthey
961 for the initial patch.
963 - The android plugin can now be used without the Android frontend patch and
964 provides DNS server registration and logging to logcat.
966 - Pluto and starter (plus stroke and whack) have been ported to Android.
968 - Support for ECDSA private and public key operations has been added to the
969 pkcs11 plugin. The plugin now also provides DH and ECDH via PKCS#11 and can
970 use tokens as random number generators (RNG). By default only private key
971 operations are enabled, more advanced features have to be enabled by their
972 option in strongswan.conf. This also applies to public key operations (even
973 for keys not stored on the token) which were enabled by default before.
975 - The libstrongswan plugin system now supports detailed plugin dependencies.
976 Many plugins have been extended to export its capabilities and requirements.
977 This allows the plugin loader to resolve plugin loading order automatically,
978 and in future releases, to dynamically load the required features on demand.
979 Existing third party plugins are source (but not binary) compatible if they
980 properly initialize the new get_features() plugin function to NULL.
982 - The tnc-ifmap plugin implements a TNC IF-MAP 2.0 client which can deliver
983 metadata about IKE_SAs via a SOAP interface to a MAP server. The tnc-ifmap
984 plugin requires the Apache Axis2/C library.
990 - Our private libraries (e.g. libstrongswan) are not installed directly in
991 prefix/lib anymore. Instead a subdirectory is used (prefix/lib/ipsec/ by
992 default). The plugins directory is also moved from libexec/ipsec/ to that
995 - The dynamic IMC/IMV libraries were moved from the plugins directory to
996 a new imcvs directory in the prefix/lib/ipsec/ subdirectory.
998 - Job priorities were introduced to prevent thread starvation caused by too
999 many threads handling blocking operations (such as CRL fetching). Refer to
1000 strongswan.conf(5) for details.
1002 - Two new strongswan.conf options allow to fine-tune performance on IKEv2
1003 gateways by dropping IKE_SA_INIT requests on high load.
1005 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports start PASS and DROP shunt policies
1006 preventing traffic to go through IPsec connections. Installation of the
1007 shunt policies either via the XFRM netfilter or PFKEYv2 IPsec kernel
1010 - The history of policies installed in the kernel is now tracked so that e.g.
1011 trap policies are correctly updated when reauthenticated SAs are terminated.
1013 - IMC/IMV Scanner pair implementing the RFC 5792 PA-TNC (IF-M) protocol.
1014 Using "netstat -l" the IMC scans open listening ports on the TNC client
1015 and sends a port list to the IMV which based on a port policy decides if
1016 the client is admitted to the network.
1017 (--enable-imc-scanner/--enable-imv-scanner).
1019 - IMC/IMV Test pair implementing the RFC 5792 PA-TNC (IF-M) protocol.
1020 (--enable-imc-test/--enable-imv-test).
1022 - The IKEv2 close action does not use the same value as the ipsec.conf dpdaction
1023 setting, but the value defined by its own closeaction keyword. The action
1024 is triggered if the remote peer closes a CHILD_SA unexpectedly.
1030 - The whitelist plugin for the IKEv2 daemon maintains an in-memory identity
1031 whitelist. Any connection attempt of peers not whitelisted will get rejected.
1032 The 'ipsec whitelist' utility provides a simple command line frontend for
1033 whitelist administration.
1035 - The duplicheck plugin provides a specialized form of duplicate checking,
1036 doing a liveness check on the old SA and optionally notify a third party
1037 application about detected duplicates.
1039 - The coupling plugin permanently couples two or more devices by limiting
1040 authentication to previously used certificates.
1042 - In the case that the peer config and child config don't have the same name
1043 (usually in SQL database defined connections), ipsec up|route <peer config>
1044 starts|routes all associated child configs and ipsec up|route <child config>
1045 only starts|routes the specific child config.
1047 - fixed the encoding and parsing of X.509 certificate policy statements (CPS).
1049 - Duncan Salerno contributed the eap-sim-pcsc plugin implementing a
1050 pcsc-lite based SIM card backend.
1052 - The eap-peap plugin implements the EAP PEAP protocol. Interoperates
1053 successfully with a FreeRADIUS server and Windows 7 Agile VPN clients.
1055 - The IKEv2 daemon charon rereads strongswan.conf on SIGHUP and instructs
1056 all plugins to reload. Currently only the eap-radius and the attr plugins
1057 support configuration reloading.
1059 - Added userland support to the IKEv2 daemon for Extended Sequence Numbers
1060 support coming with Linux 2.6.39. To enable ESN on a connection, add
1061 the 'esn' keyword to the proposal. The default proposal uses 32-bit sequence
1062 numbers only ('noesn'), and the same value is used if no ESN mode is
1063 specified. To negotiate ESN support with the peer, include both, e.g.
1064 esp=aes128-sha1-esn-noesn.
1066 - In addition to ESN, Linux 2.6.39 gained support for replay windows larger
1067 than 32 packets. The new global strongswan.conf option 'charon.replay_window'
1068 configures the size of the replay window, in packets.
1074 - Sansar Choinyambuu implemented the RFC 5793 Posture Broker Protocol (BP)
1075 compatible with Trusted Network Connect (TNC). The TNCCS 2.0 protocol
1076 requires the tnccs_20, tnc_imc and tnc_imv plugins but does not depend
1077 on the libtnc library. Any available IMV/IMC pairs conforming to the
1078 Trusted Computing Group's TNC-IF-IMV/IMC 1.2 interface specification
1079 can be loaded via /etc/tnc_config.
1081 - Re-implemented the TNCCS 1.1 protocol by using the tnc_imc and tnc_imv
1082 in place of the external libtnc library.
1084 - The tnccs_dynamic plugin loaded on a TNC server in addition to the
1085 tnccs_11 and tnccs_20 plugins, dynamically detects the IF-TNCCS
1086 protocol version used by a TNC client and invokes an instance of
1087 the corresponding protocol stack.
1089 - IKE and ESP proposals can now be stored in an SQL database using a
1090 new proposals table. The start_action field in the child_configs
1091 tables allows the automatic starting or routing of connections stored
1094 - The new certificate_authorities and certificate_distribution_points
1095 tables make it possible to store CRL and OCSP Certificate Distribution
1096 points in an SQL database.
1098 - The new 'include' statement allows to recursively include other files in
1099 strongswan.conf. Existing sections and values are thereby extended and
1100 replaced, respectively.
1102 - Due to the changes in the parser for strongswan.conf, the configuration
1103 syntax for the attr plugin has changed. Previously, it was possible to
1104 specify multiple values of a specific attribute type by adding multiple
1105 key/value pairs with the same key (e.g. dns) to the plugins.attr section.
1106 Because values with the same key now replace previously defined values
1107 this is not possible anymore. As an alternative, multiple values can be
1108 specified by separating them with a comma (e.g. dns = 1.2.3.4, 2.3.4.5).
1110 - ipsec listalgs now appends (set in square brackets) to each crypto
1111 algorithm listed the plugin that registered the function.
1113 - Traffic Flow Confidentiality padding supported with Linux 2.6.38 can be used
1114 by the IKEv2 daemon. The ipsec.conf 'tfc' keyword pads all packets to a given
1115 boundary, the special value '%mtu' pads all packets to the path MTU.
1117 - The new af-alg plugin can use various crypto primitives of the Linux Crypto
1118 API using the AF_ALG interface introduced with 2.6.38. This removes the need
1119 for additional userland implementations of symmetric cipher, hash, hmac and
1122 - The IKEv2 daemon supports the INITIAL_CONTACT notify as initiator and
1123 responder. The notify is sent when initiating configurations with a unique
1124 policy, set in ipsec.conf via the global 'uniqueids' option.
1126 - The conftest conformance testing framework enables the IKEv2 stack to perform
1127 many tests using a distinct tool and configuration frontend. Various hooks
1128 can alter reserved bits, flags, add custom notifies and proposals, reorder
1129 or drop messages and much more. It is enabled using the --enable-conftest
1132 - The new libstrongswan constraints plugin provides advanced X.509 constraint
1133 checking. In addition to X.509 pathLen constraints, the plugin checks for
1134 nameConstraints and certificatePolicies, including policyMappings and
1135 policyConstraints. The x509 certificate plugin and the pki tool have been
1136 enhanced to support these extensions. The new left/rightcertpolicy ipsec.conf
1137 connection keywords take OIDs a peer certificate must have.
1139 - The left/rightauth ipsec.conf keywords accept values with a minimum strength
1140 for trustchain public keys in bits, such as rsa-2048 or ecdsa-256.
1142 - The revocation and x509 libstrongswan plugins and the pki tool gained basic
1143 support for delta CRLs.
1149 - IMPORTANT: the default keyexchange mode 'ike' is changing with release 4.5
1150 from 'ikev1' to 'ikev2', thus commemorating the five year anniversary of the
1151 IKEv2 RFC 4306 and its mature successor RFC 5996. The time has definitively
1152 come for IKEv1 to go into retirement and to cede its place to the much more
1153 robust, powerful and versatile IKEv2 protocol!
1155 - Added new ctr, ccm and gcm plugins providing Counter, Counter with CBC-MAC
1156 and Galois/Counter Modes based on existing CBC implementations. These
1157 new plugins bring support for AES and Camellia Counter and CCM algorithms
1158 and the AES GCM algorithms for use in IKEv2.
1160 - The new pkcs11 plugin brings full Smartcard support to the IKEv2 daemon and
1161 the pki utility using one or more PKCS#11 libraries. It currently supports
1162 RSA private and public key operations and loads X.509 certificates from
1165 - Implemented a general purpose TLS stack based on crypto and credential
1166 primitives of libstrongswan. libtls supports TLS versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2,
1167 ECDHE-ECDSA/RSA, DHE-RSA and RSA key exchange algorithms and RSA/ECDSA based
1168 client authentication.
1170 - Based on libtls, the eap-tls plugin brings certificate based EAP
1171 authentication for client and server. It is compatible to Windows 7 IKEv2
1172 Smartcard authentication and the OpenSSL based FreeRADIUS EAP-TLS backend.
1174 - Implemented the TNCCS 1.1 Trusted Network Connect protocol using the
1175 libtnc library on the strongSwan client and server side via the tnccs_11
1176 plugin and optionally connecting to a TNC@FHH-enhanced FreeRADIUS AAA server.
1177 Depending on the resulting TNC Recommendation, strongSwan clients are granted
1178 access to a network behind a strongSwan gateway (allow), are put into a
1179 remediation zone (isolate) or are blocked (none), respectively. Any number
1180 of Integrity Measurement Collector/Verifier pairs can be attached
1181 via the tnc-imc and tnc-imv charon plugins.
1183 - The IKEv1 daemon pluto now uses the same kernel interfaces as the IKEv2
1184 daemon charon. As a result of this, pluto now supports xfrm marks which
1185 were introduced in charon with 4.4.1.
1187 - Applets for Maemo 5 (Nokia) allow to easily configure and control IKEv2
1188 based VPN connections with EAP authentication on supported devices.
1190 - The RADIUS plugin eap-radius now supports multiple RADIUS servers for
1191 redundant setups. Servers are selected by a defined priority, server load and
1194 - The simple led plugin controls hardware LEDs through the Linux LED subsystem.
1195 It currently shows activity of the IKE daemon and is a good example how to
1196 implement a simple event listener.
1198 - Improved MOBIKE behavior in several corner cases, for instance, if the
1199 initial responder moves to a different address.
1201 - Fixed left-/rightnexthop option, which was broken since 4.4.0.
1203 - Fixed a bug not releasing a virtual IP address to a pool if the XAUTH
1204 identity was different from the IKE identity.
1206 - Fixed the alignment of ModeConfig messages on 4-byte boundaries in the
1207 case where the attributes are not a multiple of 4 bytes (e.g. Cisco's
1210 - Fixed the interoperability of the socket_raw and socket_default
1213 - Added man page for strongswan.conf
1219 - Support of xfrm marks in IPsec SAs and IPsec policies introduced
1220 with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel. For details see the example scenarios
1221 ikev2/nat-two-rw-mark, ikev2/rw-nat-mark-in-out and ikev2/net2net-psk-dscp.
1223 - The PLUTO_MARK_IN and PLUTO_ESP_ENC environment variables can be used
1224 in a user-specific updown script to set marks on inbound ESP or
1227 - The openssl plugin now supports X.509 certificate and CRL functions.
1229 - OCSP/CRL checking in IKEv2 has been moved to the revocation plugin, enabled
1230 by default. Plase update manual load directives in strongswan.conf.
1232 - RFC3779 ipAddrBlock constraint checking has been moved to the addrblock
1233 plugin, disabled by default. Enable it and update manual load directives
1234 in strongswan.conf, if required.
1236 - The pki utility supports CRL generation using the --signcrl command.
1238 - The ipsec pki --self, --issue and --req commands now support output in
1239 PEM format using the --outform pem option.
1241 - The major refactoring of the IKEv1 Mode Config functionality now allows
1242 the transport and handling of any Mode Config attribute.
1244 - The RADIUS proxy plugin eap-radius now supports multiple servers. Configured
1245 servers are chosen randomly, with the option to prefer a specific server.
1246 Non-responding servers are degraded by the selection process.
1248 - The ipsec pool tool manages arbitrary configuration attributes stored
1249 in an SQL database. ipsec pool --help gives the details.
1251 - The new eap-simaka-sql plugin acts as a backend for EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA,
1252 reading triplets/quintuplets from an SQL database.
1254 - The High Availability plugin now supports a HA enabled in-memory address
1255 pool and Node reintegration without IKE_SA rekeying. The latter allows
1256 clients without IKE_SA rekeying support to keep connected during
1257 reintegration. Additionally, many other issues have been fixed in the ha
1260 - Fixed a potential remote code execution vulnerability resulting from
1261 the misuse of snprintf(). The vulnerability is exploitable by
1262 unauthenticated users.
1268 - The IKEv2 High Availability plugin has been integrated. It provides
1269 load sharing and failover capabilities in a cluster of currently two nodes,
1270 based on an extend ClusterIP kernel module. More information is available at
1271 http://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/HighAvailability.
1272 The development of the High Availability functionality was sponsored by
1273 secunet Security Networks AG.
1275 - Added IKEv1 and IKEv2 configuration support for the AES-GMAC
1276 authentication-only ESP cipher. Our aes_gmac kernel patch or a Linux
1277 2.6.34 kernel is required to make AES-GMAC available via the XFRM
1280 - Added support for Diffie-Hellman groups 22, 23 and 24 to the gmp, gcrypt
1281 and openssl plugins, usable by both pluto and charon. The new proposal
1282 keywords are modp1024s160, modp2048s224 and modp2048s256. Thanks to Joy Latten
1283 from IBM for his contribution.
1285 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon supports RAM-based virtual IP pools using
1286 the rightsourceip directive with a subnet from which addresses
1289 - The ipsec pki --gen and --pub commands now allow the output of
1290 private and public keys in PEM format using the --outform pem
1291 command line option.
1293 - The new DHCP plugin queries virtual IP addresses for clients from a DHCP
1294 server using broadcasts, or a defined server using the
1295 charon.plugins.dhcp.server strongswan.conf option. DNS/WINS server information
1296 is additionally served to clients if the DHCP server provides such
1297 information. The plugin is used in ipsec.conf configurations having
1298 rightsourceip set to %dhcp.
1300 - A new plugin called farp fakes ARP responses for virtual IP addresses
1301 handed out to clients from the IKEv2 daemon charon. The plugin lets a
1302 road-warrior act as a client on the local LAN if it uses a virtual IP
1303 from the responders subnet, e.g. acquired using the DHCP plugin.
1305 - The existing IKEv2 socket implementations have been migrated to the
1306 socket-default and the socket-raw plugins. The new socket-dynamic plugin
1307 binds sockets dynamically to ports configured via the left-/rightikeport
1308 ipsec.conf connection parameters.
1310 - The android charon plugin stores received DNS server information as "net.dns"
1311 system properties, as used by the Android platform.
1317 - The IKEv2 daemon supports RFC 3779 IP address block constraints
1318 carried as a critical X.509v3 extension in the peer certificate.
1320 - The ipsec pool --add|del dns|nbns command manages DNS and NBNS name
1321 server entries that are sent via the IKEv1 Mode Config or IKEv2
1322 Configuration Payload to remote clients.
1324 - The Camellia cipher can be used as an IKEv1 encryption algorithm.
1326 - The IKEv1 and IKEV2 daemons now check certificate path length constraints.
1328 - The new ipsec.conf conn option "inactivity" closes a CHILD_SA if no traffic
1329 was sent or received within the given interval. To close the complete IKE_SA
1330 if its only CHILD_SA was inactive, set the global strongswan.conf option
1331 "charon.inactivity_close_ike" to yes.
1333 - More detailed IKEv2 EAP payload information in debug output
1335 - IKEv2 EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA share joint libsimaka library
1337 - Added required userland changes for proper SHA256 and SHA384/512 in ESP that
1338 will be introduced with Linux 2.6.33. The "sha256"/"sha2_256" keyword now
1339 configures the kernel with 128 bit truncation, not the non-standard 96
1340 bit truncation used by previous releases. To use the old 96 bit truncation
1341 scheme, the new "sha256_96" proposal keyword has been introduced.
1343 - Fixed IPComp in tunnel mode, stripping out the duplicated outer header. This
1344 change makes IPcomp tunnel mode connections incompatible with previous
1345 releases; disable compression on such tunnels.
1347 - Fixed BEET mode connections on recent kernels by installing SAs with
1348 appropriate traffic selectors, based on a patch by Michael Rossberg.
1350 - Using extensions (such as BEET mode) and crypto algorithms (such as twofish,
1351 serpent, sha256_96) allocated in the private use space now require that we
1352 know its meaning, i.e. we are talking to strongSwan. Use the new
1353 "charon.send_vendor_id" option in strongswan.conf to let the remote peer know
1356 - Experimental support for draft-eronen-ipsec-ikev2-eap-auth, where the
1357 responder omits public key authentication in favor of a mutual authentication
1358 method. To enable EAP-only authentication, set rightauth=eap on the responder
1359 to rely only on the MSK constructed AUTH payload. This not-yet standardized
1360 extension requires the strongSwan vendor ID introduced above.
1362 - The IKEv1 daemon ignores the Juniper SRX notification type 40001, thus
1363 allowing interoperability.
1369 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon can now use SQL-based address pools to deal out
1370 virtual IP addresses as a Mode Config server. The pool capability has been
1371 migrated from charon's sql plugin to a new attr-sql plugin which is loaded
1372 by libstrongswan and which can be used by both daemons either with a SQLite
1373 or MySQL database and the corresponding plugin.
1375 - Plugin names have been streamlined: EAP plugins now have a dash after eap
1376 (e.g. eap-sim), as it is used with the --enable-eap-sim ./configure option.
1377 Plugin configuration sections in strongswan.conf now use the same name as the
1378 plugin itself (i.e. with a dash). Make sure to update "load" directives and
1379 the affected plugin sections in existing strongswan.conf files.
1381 - The private/public key parsing and encoding has been split up into
1382 separate pkcs1, pgp, pem and dnskey plugins. The public key implementation
1383 plugins gmp, gcrypt and openssl can all make use of them.
1385 - The EAP-AKA plugin can use different backends for USIM/quintuplet
1386 calculations, very similar to the EAP-SIM plugin. The existing 3GPP2 software
1387 implementation has been migrated to a separate plugin.
1389 - The IKEv2 daemon charon gained basic PGP support. It can use locally installed
1390 peer certificates and can issue signatures based on RSA private keys.
1392 - The new 'ipsec pki' tool provides a set of commands to maintain a public
1393 key infrastructure. It currently supports operations to create RSA and ECDSA
1394 private/public keys, calculate fingerprints and issue or verify certificates.
1396 - Charon uses a monotonic time source for statistics and job queueing, behaving
1397 correctly if the system time changes (e.g. when using NTP).
1399 - In addition to time based rekeying, charon supports IPsec SA lifetimes based
1400 on processed volume or number of packets. They new ipsec.conf paramaters
1401 'lifetime' (an alias to 'keylife'), 'lifebytes' and 'lifepackets' handle
1402 SA timeouts, while the parameters 'margintime' (an alias to rekeymargin),
1403 'marginbytes' and 'marginpackets' trigger the rekeying before a SA expires.
1404 The existing parameter 'rekeyfuzz' affects all margins.
1406 - If no CA/Gateway certificate is specified in the NetworkManager plugin,
1407 charon uses a set of trusted root certificates preinstalled by distributions.
1408 The directory containing CA certificates can be specified using the
1409 --with-nm-ca-dir=path configure option.
1411 - Fixed the encoding of the Email relative distinguished name in left|rightid
1414 - Fixed the broken parsing of PKCS#7 wrapped certificates by the pluto daemon.
1416 - Fixed smartcard-based authentication in the pluto daemon which was broken by
1417 the ECDSA support introduced with the 4.3.2 release.
1419 - A patch contributed by Heiko Hund fixes mixed IPv6 in IPv4 and vice versa
1420 tunnels established with the IKEv1 pluto daemon.
1422 - The pluto daemon now uses the libstrongswan x509 plugin for certificates and
1423 CRls and the struct id type was replaced by identification_t used by charon
1424 and the libstrongswan library.
1430 - IKEv2 charon daemon ported to FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Installation details can
1431 be found on wiki.strongswan.org.
1433 - ipsec statusall shows the number of bytes transmitted and received over
1434 ESP connections configured by the IKEv2 charon daemon.
1436 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports include files in ipsec.secrets.
1442 - The configuration option --enable-integrity-test plus the strongswan.conf
1443 option libstrongswan.integrity_test = yes activate integrity tests
1444 of the IKE daemons charon and pluto, libstrongswan and all loaded
1445 plugins. Thus dynamic library misconfigurations and non-malicious file
1446 manipulations can be reliably detected.
1448 - The new default setting libstrongswan.ecp_x_coordinate_only=yes allows
1449 IKEv1 interoperability with MS Windows using the ECP DH groups 19 and 20.
1451 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the AES-CCM and AES-GCM ESP
1452 authenticated encryption algorithms.
1454 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports V4 OpenPGP keys.
1456 - The RDN parser vulnerability discovered by Orange Labs research team
1457 was not completely fixed in version 4.3.2. Some more modifications
1458 had to be applied to the asn1_length() function to make it robust.
1464 - The new gcrypt plugin provides symmetric cipher, hasher, RNG, Diffie-Hellman
1465 and RSA crypto primitives using the LGPL licensed GNU gcrypt library.
1467 - libstrongswan features an integrated crypto selftest framework for registered
1468 algorithms. The test-vector plugin provides a first set of test vectors and
1469 allows pluto and charon to rely on tested crypto algorithms.
1471 - pluto can now use all libstrongswan plugins with the exception of x509 and xcbc.
1472 Thanks to the openssl plugin, the ECP Diffie-Hellman groups 19, 20, 21, 25, and
1473 26 as well as ECDSA-256, ECDSA-384, and ECDSA-521 authentication can be used
1476 - Applying their fuzzing tool, the Orange Labs vulnerability research team found
1477 another two DoS vulnerabilities, one in the rather old ASN.1 parser of Relative
1478 Distinguished Names (RDNs) and a second one in the conversion of ASN.1 UTCTIME
1479 and GENERALIZEDTIME strings to a time_t value.
1485 - The nm plugin now passes DNS/NBNS server information to NetworkManager,
1486 allowing a gateway administrator to set DNS/NBNS configuration on clients
1489 - The nm plugin also accepts CA certificates for gateway authentication. If
1490 a CA certificate is configured, strongSwan uses the entered gateway address
1491 as its idenitity, requiring the gateways certificate to contain the same as
1492 subjectAltName. This allows a gateway administrator to deploy the same
1493 certificates to Windows 7 and NetworkManager clients.
1495 - The command ipsec purgeike deletes IKEv2 SAs that don't have a CHILD SA.
1496 The command ipsec down <conn>{n} deletes CHILD SA instance n of connection
1497 <conn> whereas ipsec down <conn>{*} deletes all CHILD SA instances.
1498 The command ipsec down <conn>[n] deletes IKE SA instance n of connection
1499 <conn> plus dependent CHILD SAs whereas ipsec down <conn>[*] deletes all
1500 IKE SA instances of connection <conn>.
1502 - Fixed a regression introduced in 4.3.0 where EAP authentication calculated
1503 the AUTH payload incorrectly. Further, the EAP-MSCHAPv2 MSK key derivation
1504 has been updated to be compatible with the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
1506 - Refactored installation of triggering policies. Routed policies are handled
1507 outside of IKE_SAs to keep them installed in any case. A tunnel gets
1508 established only once, even if initiation is delayed due network outages.
1510 - Improved the handling of multiple acquire signals triggered by the kernel.
1512 - Fixed two DoS vulnerabilities in the charon daemon that were discovered by
1513 fuzzing techniques: 1) Sending a malformed IKE_SA_INIT request leaved an
1514 incomplete state which caused a null pointer dereference if a subsequent
1515 CREATE_CHILD_SA request was sent. 2) Sending an IKE_AUTH request with either
1516 a missing TSi or TSr payload caused a null pointer derefence because the
1517 checks for TSi and TSr were interchanged. The IKEv2 fuzzer used was
1518 developed by the Orange Labs vulnerability research team. The tool was
1519 initially written by Gabriel Campana and is now maintained by Laurent Butti.
1521 - Added support for AES counter mode in ESP in IKEv2 using the proposal
1522 keywords aes128ctr, aes192ctr and aes256ctr.
1524 - Further progress in refactoring pluto: Use of the curl and ldap plugins
1525 for fetching crls and OCSP. Use of the random plugin to get keying material
1526 from /dev/random or /dev/urandom. Use of the openssl plugin as an alternative
1527 to the aes, des, sha1, sha2, and md5 plugins. The blowfish, twofish, and
1528 serpent encryption plugins are now optional and are not enabled by default.
1534 - Support for the IKEv2 Multiple Authentication Exchanges extension (RFC4739).
1535 Initiators and responders can use several authentication rounds (e.g. RSA
1536 followed by EAP) to authenticate. The new ipsec.conf leftauth/rightauth and
1537 leftauth2/rightauth2 parameters define own authentication rounds or setup
1538 constraints for the remote peer. See the ipsec.conf man page for more detials.
1540 - If glibc printf hooks (register_printf_function) are not available,
1541 strongSwan can use the vstr string library to run on non-glibc systems.
1543 - The IKEv2 charon daemon can now configure the ESP CAMELLIA-CBC cipher
1544 (esp=camellia128|192|256).
1546 - Refactored the pluto and scepclient code to use basic functions (memory
1547 allocation, leak detective, chunk handling, printf_hooks, strongswan.conf
1548 attributes, ASN.1 parser, etc.) from the libstrongswan library.
1550 - Up to two DNS and WINS servers to be sent via IKEv1 ModeConfig can be
1551 configured in the pluto section of strongswan.conf.
1557 - The new server-side EAP RADIUS plugin (--enable-eap-radius)
1558 relays EAP messages to and from a RADIUS server. Successfully
1559 tested with with a freeradius server using EAP-MD5 and EAP-SIM.
1561 - A vulnerability in the Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706) code was found by
1562 Gerd v. Egidy <gerd.von.egidy@intra2net.com> of Intra2net AG affecting
1563 all Openswan and strongSwan releases. A malicious (or expired ISAKMP)
1564 R_U_THERE or R_U_THERE_ACK Dead Peer Detection packet can cause the
1565 pluto IKE daemon to crash and restart. No authentication or encryption
1566 is required to trigger this bug. One spoofed UDP packet can cause the
1567 pluto IKE daemon to restart and be unresponsive for a few seconds while
1568 restarting. This DPD null state vulnerability has been officially
1569 registered as CVE-2009-0790 and is fixed by this release.
1571 - ASN.1 to time_t conversion caused a time wrap-around for
1572 dates after Jan 18 03:14:07 UTC 2038 on 32-bit platforms.
1573 As a workaround such dates are set to the maximum representable
1574 time, i.e. Jan 19 03:14:07 UTC 2038.
1576 - Distinguished Names containing wildcards (*) are not sent in the
1577 IDr payload anymore.
1583 - Fixed a use-after-free bug in the DPD timeout section of the
1584 IKEv1 pluto daemon which sporadically caused a segfault.
1586 - Fixed a crash in the IKEv2 charon daemon occurring with
1587 mixed RAM-based and SQL-based virtual IP address pools.
1589 - Fixed ASN.1 parsing of algorithmIdentifier objects where the
1590 parameters field is optional.
1592 - Ported nm plugin to NetworkManager 7.1.
1598 - Support of the EAP-MSCHAPv2 protocol enabled by the option
1599 --enable-eap-mschapv2. Requires the MD4 hash algorithm enabled
1600 either by --enable-md4 or --enable-openssl.
1602 - Assignment of up to two DNS and up to two WINS servers to peers via
1603 the IKEv2 Configuration Payload (CP). The IPv4 or IPv6 nameserver
1604 addresses are defined in strongswan.conf.
1606 - The strongSwan applet for the Gnome NetworkManager is now built and
1607 distributed as a separate tarball under the name NetworkManager-strongswan.
1613 - Fixed ESP NULL encryption broken by the refactoring of keymat.c.
1614 Also introduced proper initialization and disposal of keying material.
1616 - Fixed the missing listing of connection definitions in ipsec statusall
1617 broken by an unfortunate local variable overload.
1623 - Several performance improvements to handle thousands of tunnels with almost
1624 linear upscaling. All relevant data structures have been replaced by faster
1625 counterparts with better lookup times.
1627 - Better parallelization to run charon on multiple cores. Due to improved
1628 ressource locking and other optimizations the daemon can take full
1629 advantage of 16 or even more cores.
1631 - The load-tester plugin can use a NULL Diffie-Hellman group and simulate
1632 unique identities and certificates by signing peer certificates using a CA
1635 - The redesigned stroke in-memory IP pool handles leases. The "ipsec leases"
1636 command queries assigned leases.
1638 - Added support for smartcards in charon by using the ENGINE API provided by
1639 OpenSSL, based on patches by Michael Roßberg.
1641 - The Padlock plugin supports the hardware RNG found on VIA CPUs to provide a
1642 reliable source of randomness.
1647 - Flexible configuration of logging subsystem allowing to log to multiple
1648 syslog facilities or to files using fine-grained log levels for each target.
1650 - Load testing plugin to do stress testing of the IKEv2 daemon against self
1651 or another host. Found and fixed issues during tests in the multi-threaded
1652 use of the OpenSSL plugin.
1654 - Added profiling code to synchronization primitives to find bottlenecks if
1655 running on multiple cores. Found and fixed an issue where parts of the
1656 Diffie-Hellman calculation acquired an exclusive lock. This greatly improves
1657 parallelization to multiple cores.
1659 - updown script invocation has been separated into a plugin of its own to
1660 further slim down the daemon core.
1662 - Separated IKE_SA/CHILD_SA key derivation process into a closed system,
1663 allowing future implementations to use a secured environment in e.g. kernel
1666 - The kernel interface of charon has been modularized. XFRM NETLINK (default)
1667 and PFKEY (--enable-kernel-pfkey) interface plugins for the native IPsec
1668 stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel as well as a PFKEY interface for the KLIPS
1669 IPsec stack (--enable-kernel-klips) are provided.
1671 - Basic Mobile IPv6 support has been introduced, securing Binding Update
1672 messages as well as tunneled traffic between Mobile Node and Home Agent.
1673 The installpolicy=no option allows peaceful cooperation with a dominant
1674 mip6d daemon and the new type=transport_proxy implements the special MIPv6
1675 IPsec transport proxy mode where the IKEv2 daemon uses the Care-of-Address
1676 but the IPsec SA is set up for the Home Address.
1678 - Implemented migration of Mobile IPv6 connections using the KMADDRESS
1679 field contained in XFRM_MSG_MIGRATE messages sent by the mip6d daemon
1680 via the Linux 2.6.28 (or appropriately patched) kernel.
1686 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports authentication based on raw public keys
1687 stored in the SQL database backend. The ipsec listpubkeys command
1688 lists the available raw public keys via the stroke interface.
1690 - Several MOBIKE improvements: Detect changes in NAT mappings in DPD exchanges,
1691 handle events if kernel detects NAT mapping changes in UDP-encapsulated
1692 ESP packets (requires kernel patch), reuse old addesses in MOBIKE updates as
1693 long as possible and other fixes.
1695 - Fixed a bug in addr_in_subnet() which caused insertion of wrong source
1696 routes for destination subnets having netwmasks not being a multiple of 8 bits.
1697 Thanks go to Wolfgang Steudel, TU Ilmenau for reporting this bug.
1703 - Fixed a Denial-of-Service vulnerability where an IKE_SA_INIT message with
1704 a KE payload containing zeroes only can cause a crash of the IKEv2 charon
1705 daemon due to a NULL pointer returned by the mpz_export() function of the
1706 GNU Multiprecision Library (GMP). Thanks go to Mu Dynamics Research Labs
1707 for making us aware of this problem.
1709 - The new agent plugin provides a private key implementation on top of an
1712 - The NetworkManager plugin has been extended to support certificate client
1713 authentication using RSA keys loaded from a file or using ssh-agent.
1715 - Daemon capability dropping has been ported to libcap and must be enabled
1716 explicitly --with-capabilities=libcap. Future version will support the
1717 newer libcap2 library.
1719 - ipsec listalgs lists the IKEv2 cryptografic algorithms registered with the
1720 charon keying daemon.
1726 - A NetworkManager plugin allows GUI-based configuration of road-warrior
1727 clients in a simple way. It features X509 based gateway authentication
1728 and EAP client authentication, tunnel setup/teardown and storing passwords
1729 in the Gnome Keyring.
1731 - A new EAP-GTC plugin implements draft-sheffer-ikev2-gtc-00.txt and allows
1732 username/password authentication against any PAM service on the gateway.
1733 The new EAP method interacts nicely with the NetworkManager plugin and allows
1734 client authentication against e.g. LDAP.
1736 - Improved support for the EAP-Identity method. The new ipsec.conf eap_identity
1737 parameter defines an additional identity to pass to the server in EAP
1740 - The "ipsec statusall" command now lists CA restrictions, EAP
1741 authentication types and EAP identities.
1743 - Fixed two multithreading deadlocks occurring when starting up
1744 several hundred tunnels concurrently.
1746 - Fixed the --enable-integrity-test configure option which
1747 computes a SHA-1 checksum over the libstrongswan library.
1753 - Consistent logging of IKE and CHILD SAs at the audit (AUD) level.
1755 - Improved the performance of the SQL-based virtual IP address pool
1756 by introducing an additional addresses table. The leases table
1757 storing only history information has become optional and can be
1758 disabled by setting charon.plugins.sql.lease_history = no in
1761 - The XFRM_STATE_AF_UNSPEC flag added to xfrm.h allows IPv4-over-IPv6
1762 and IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnels with the 2.6.26 and later Linux kernels.
1764 - management of different virtual IP pools for different
1765 network interfaces have become possible.
1767 - fixed a bug which prevented the assignment of more than 256
1768 virtual IP addresses from a pool managed by an sql database.
1770 - fixed a bug which did not delete own IPCOMP SAs in the kernel.
1776 - Added statistics functions to ipsec pool --status and ipsec pool --leases
1777 and input validation checks to various ipsec pool commands.
1779 - ipsec statusall now lists all loaded charon plugins and displays
1780 the negotiated IKEv2 cipher suite proposals.
1782 - The openssl plugin supports the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman groups
1783 19, 20, 21, 25, and 26.
1785 - The openssl plugin supports ECDSA authentication using elliptic curve
1788 - Fixed a bug in stroke which caused multiple charon threads to close
1789 the file descriptors during packet transfers over the stroke socket.
1791 - ESP sequence numbers are now migrated in IPsec SA updates handled by
1792 MOBIKE. Works only with Linux kernels >= 2.6.17.
1798 - Fixed the strongswan.conf path configuration problem that occurred when
1799 --sysconfig was not set explicitly in ./configure.
1801 - Fixed a number of minor bugs that where discovered during the 4th
1802 IKEv2 interoperability workshop in San Antonio, TX.
1808 - Plugins for libstrongswan and charon can optionally be loaded according
1809 to a configuration in strongswan.conf. Most components provide a
1810 "load = " option followed by a space separated list of plugins to load.
1811 This allows e.g. the fallback from a hardware crypto accelerator to
1812 to software-based crypto plugins.
1814 - Charons SQL plugin has been extended by a virtual IP address pool.
1815 Configurations with a rightsourceip=%poolname setting query a SQLite or
1816 MySQL database for leases. The "ipsec pool" command helps in administrating
1817 the pool database. See ipsec pool --help for the available options
1819 - The Authenticated Encryption Algorithms AES-CCM-8/12/16 and AES-GCM-8/12/16
1820 for ESP are now supported starting with the Linux 2.6.25 kernel. The
1821 syntax is e.g. esp=aes128ccm12 or esp=aes256gcm16.
1827 - Support for "Hash and URL" encoded certificate payloads has been implemented
1828 in the IKEv2 daemon charon. Using the "certuribase" option of a CA section
1829 allows to assign a base URL to all certificates issued by the specified CA.
1830 The final URL is then built by concatenating that base and the hex encoded
1831 SHA1 hash of the DER encoded certificate. Note that this feature is disabled
1832 by default and must be enabled using the option "charon.hash_and_url".
1834 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports the "uniqueids" option to close multiple
1835 IKE_SAs with the same peer. The option value "keep" prefers existing
1836 connection setups over new ones, where the value "replace" replaces existing
1839 - The crypto factory in libstrongswan additionally supports random number
1840 generators, plugins may provide other sources of randomness. The default
1841 plugin reads raw random data from /dev/(u)random.
1843 - Extended the credential framework by a caching option to allow plugins
1844 persistent caching of fetched credentials. The "cachecrl" option has been
1847 - The new trustchain verification introduced in 4.2.0 has been parallelized.
1848 Threads fetching CRL or OCSP information no longer block other threads.
1850 - A new IKEv2 configuration attribute framework has been introduced allowing
1851 plugins to provide virtual IP addresses, and in the future, other
1852 configuration attribute services (e.g. DNS/WINS servers).
1854 - The stroke plugin has been extended to provide virtual IP addresses from
1855 a pool defined in ipsec.conf. The "rightsourceip" parameter now accepts
1856 address pools in CIDR notation (e.g. 10.1.1.0/24). The parameter also accepts
1857 the value "%poolname", where "poolname" identifies a pool provided by a
1860 - Fixed compilation on uClibc and a couple of other minor bugs.
1862 - Set DPD defaults in ipsec starter to dpd_delay=30s and dpd_timeout=150s.
1864 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the ESP encryption algorithm CAMELLIA
1865 with key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits, as well as the authentication
1866 algorithm AES_XCBC_MAC. Configuration example: esp=camellia192-aesxcbc.
1872 - libstrongswan has been modularized to attach crypto algorithms,
1873 credential implementations (keys, certificates) and fetchers dynamically
1874 through plugins. Existing code has been ported to plugins:
1875 - RSA/Diffie-Hellman implementation using the GNU Multi Precision library
1876 - X509 certificate system supporting CRLs, OCSP and attribute certificates
1877 - Multiple plugins providing crypto algorithms in software
1878 - CURL and OpenLDAP fetcher
1880 - libstrongswan gained a relational database API which uses pluggable database
1881 providers. Plugins for MySQL and SQLite are available.
1883 - The IKEv2 keying daemon charon is more extensible. Generic plugins may provide
1884 connection configuration, credentials and EAP methods or control the daemon.
1885 Existing code has been ported to plugins:
1886 - EAP-AKA, EAP-SIM, EAP-MD5 and EAP-Identity
1887 - stroke configuration, credential and control (compatible to pluto)
1888 - XML bases management protocol to control and query the daemon
1889 The following new plugins are available:
1890 - An experimental SQL configuration, credential and logging plugin on
1891 top of either MySQL or SQLite
1892 - A unit testing plugin to run tests at daemon startup
1894 - The authentication and credential framework in charon has been heavily
1895 refactored to support modular credential providers, proper
1896 CERTREQ/CERT payload exchanges and extensible authorization rules.
1898 - The framework of strongSwan Manager has envolved to the web application
1899 framework libfast (FastCGI Application Server w/ Templates) and is usable
1900 by other applications.
1906 - IKE rekeying in NAT situations did not inherit the NAT conditions
1907 to the rekeyed IKE_SA so that the UDP encapsulation was lost with
1908 the next CHILD_SA rekeying.
1910 - Wrong type definition of the next_payload variable in id_payload.c
1911 caused an INVALID_SYNTAX error on PowerPC platforms.
1913 - Implemented IKEv2 EAP-SIM server and client test modules that use
1914 triplets stored in a file. For details on the configuration see
1915 the scenario 'ikev2/rw-eap-sim-rsa'.
1921 - Fixed error in the ordering of the certinfo_t records in the ocsp cache that
1922 caused multiple entries of the same serial number to be created.
1924 - Implementation of a simple EAP-MD5 module which provides CHAP
1925 authentication. This may be interesting in conjunction with certificate
1926 based server authentication, as weak passwords can't be brute forced
1927 (in contradiction to traditional IKEv2 PSK).
1929 - A complete software based implementation of EAP-AKA, using algorithms
1930 specified in 3GPP2 (S.S0055). This implementation does not use an USIM,
1931 but reads the secrets from ipsec.secrets. Make sure to read eap_aka.h
1934 - Support for vendor specific EAP methods using Expanded EAP types. The
1935 interface to EAP modules has been slightly changed, so make sure to
1936 check the changes if you're already rolling your own modules.
1942 - The default _updown script now dynamically inserts and removes ip6tables
1943 firewall rules if leftfirewall=yes is set in IPv6 connections. New IPv6
1944 net-net and roadwarrior (PSK/RSA) scenarios for both IKEv1 and IKEV2 were
1947 - Implemented RFC4478 repeated authentication to force EAP/Virtual-IP clients
1948 to reestablish an IKE_SA within a given timeframe.
1950 - strongSwan Manager supports configuration listing, initiation and termination
1951 of IKE and CHILD_SAs.
1953 - Fixes and improvements to multithreading code.
1955 - IKEv2 plugins have been renamed to libcharon-* to avoid naming conflicts.
1956 Make sure to remove the old plugins in $libexecdir/ipsec, otherwise they get
1963 - Removed recursive pthread mutexes since uClibc doesn't support them.
1969 - In NAT traversal situations and multiple queued Quick Modes,
1970 those pending connections inserted by auto=start after the
1971 port floating from 500 to 4500 were erronously deleted.
1973 - Added a "forceencaps" connection parameter to enforce UDP encapsulation
1974 to surmount restrictive firewalls. NAT detection payloads are faked to
1975 simulate a NAT situation and trick the other peer into NAT mode (IKEv2 only).
1977 - Preview of strongSwan Manager, a web based configuration and monitoring
1978 application. It uses a new XML control interface to query the IKEv2 daemon
1979 (see http://wiki.strongswan.org/wiki/Manager).
1981 - Experimental SQLite configuration backend which will provide the configuration
1982 interface for strongSwan Manager in future releases.
1984 - Further improvements to MOBIKE support.
1990 - Since some third party IKEv2 implementations run into
1991 problems with strongSwan announcing MOBIKE capability per
1992 default, MOBIKE can be disabled on a per-connection-basis
1993 using the mobike=no option. Whereas mobike=no disables the
1994 sending of the MOBIKE_SUPPORTED notification and the floating
1995 to UDP port 4500 with the IKE_AUTH request even if no NAT
1996 situation has been detected, strongSwan will still support
1997 MOBIKE acting as a responder.
1999 - the default ipsec routing table plus its corresponding priority
2000 used for inserting source routes has been changed from 100 to 220.
2001 It can be configured using the --with-ipsec-routing-table and
2002 --with-ipsec-routing-table-prio options.
2004 - the --enable-integrity-test configure option tests the
2005 integrity of the libstrongswan crypto code during the charon
2008 - the --disable-xauth-vid configure option disables the sending
2009 of the XAUTH vendor ID. This can be used as a workaround when
2010 interoperating with some Windows VPN clients that get into
2011 trouble upon reception of an XAUTH VID without eXtended
2012 AUTHentication having been configured.
2014 - ipsec stroke now supports the rereadsecrets, rereadaacerts,
2015 rereadacerts, and listacerts options.
2021 - If a DNS lookup failure occurs when resolving right=%<FQDN>
2022 or right=<FQDN> combined with rightallowany=yes then the
2023 connection is not updated by ipsec starter thus preventing
2024 the disruption of an active IPsec connection. Only if the DNS
2025 lookup successfully returns with a changed IP address the
2026 corresponding connection definition is updated.
2028 - Routes installed by the keying daemons are now in a separate
2029 routing table with the ID 100 to avoid conflicts with the main
2030 table. Route lookup for IKEv2 traffic is done in userspace to ignore
2031 routes installed for IPsec, as IKE traffic shouldn't get encapsulated.
2037 - The pluto IKEv1 daemon now exhibits the same behaviour as its
2038 IKEv2 companion charon by inserting an explicit route via the
2039 _updown script only if a sourceip exists. This is admissible
2040 since routing through the IPsec tunnel is handled automatically
2041 by NETKEY's IPsec policies. As a consequence the left|rightnexthop
2042 parameter is not required any more.
2044 - The new IKEv1 parameter right|leftallowany parameters helps to handle
2045 the case where both peers possess dynamic IP addresses that are
2046 usually resolved using DynDNS or a similar service. The configuration
2051 can be used by the initiator to start up a connection to a peer
2052 by resolving peer.foo.bar into the currently allocated IP address.
2053 Thanks to the rightallowany flag the connection behaves later on
2058 so that the peer can rekey the connection as an initiator when his
2059 IP address changes. An alternative notation is
2063 which will implicitly set rightallowany=yes.
2065 - ipsec starter now fails more gracefully in the presence of parsing
2066 errors. Flawed ca and conn section are discarded and pluto is started
2067 if non-fatal errors only were encountered. If right=%peer.foo.bar
2068 cannot be resolved by DNS then right=%any will be used so that passive
2069 connections as a responder are still possible.
2071 - The new pkcs11initargs parameter that can be placed in the
2072 setup config section of /etc/ipsec.conf allows the definition
2073 of an argument string that is used with the PKCS#11 C_Initialize()
2074 function. This non-standard feature is required by the NSS softoken
2075 library. This patch was contributed by Robert Varga.
2077 - Fixed a bug in ipsec starter introduced by strongswan-2.8.5
2078 which caused a segmentation fault in the presence of unknown
2079 or misspelt keywords in ipsec.conf. This bug fix was contributed
2082 - Partial support for MOBIKE in IKEv2. The initiator acts on interface/
2083 address configuration changes and updates IKE and IPsec SAs dynamically.
2089 - IKEv2 peer configuration selection now can be based on a given
2090 certification authority using the rightca= statement.
2092 - IKEv2 authentication based on RSA signatures now can handle multiple
2093 certificates issued for a given peer ID. This allows a smooth transition
2094 in the case of a peer certificate renewal.
2096 - IKEv2: Support for requesting a specific virtual IP using leftsourceip on the
2097 client and returning requested virtual IPs using rightsourceip=%config
2098 on the server. If the server does not support configuration payloads, the
2099 client enforces its leftsourceip parameter.
2101 - The ./configure options --with-uid/--with-gid allow pluto and charon
2102 to drop their privileges to a minimum and change to an other UID/GID. This
2103 improves the systems security, as a possible intruder may only get the
2104 CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.
2106 - Further modularization of charon: Pluggable control interface and
2107 configuration backend modules provide extensibility. The control interface
2108 for stroke is included, and further interfaces using DBUS (NetworkManager)
2109 or XML are on the way. A backend for storing configurations in the daemon
2110 is provided and more advanced backends (using e.g. a database) are trivial
2113 - Fixed a compilation failure in libfreeswan occurring with Linux kernel
2120 - Support for an additional Diffie-Hellman exchange when creating/rekeying
2121 a CHILD_SA in IKEv2 (PFS). PFS is enabled when the proposal contains a
2122 DH group (e.g. "esp=aes128-sha1-modp1536"). Further, DH group negotiation
2123 is implemented properly for rekeying.
2125 - Support for the AES-XCBC-96 MAC algorithm for IPsec SAs when using IKEv2
2126 (requires linux >= 2.6.20). It is enabled using e.g. "esp=aes256-aesxcbc".
2128 - Working IPv4-in-IPv6 and IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels for linux >= 2.6.21.
2130 - Added support for EAP modules which do not establish an MSK.
2132 - Removed the dependencies from the /usr/include/linux/ headers by
2133 including xfrm.h, ipsec.h, and pfkeyv2.h in the distribution.
2135 - crlNumber is now listed by ipsec listcrls
2137 - The xauth_modules.verify_secret() function now passes the
2144 - Server side cookie support. If to may IKE_SAs are in CONNECTING state,
2145 cookies are enabled and protect against DoS attacks with faked source
2146 addresses. Number of IKE_SAs in CONNECTING state is also limited per
2147 peer address to avoid resource exhaustion. IKE_SA_INIT messages are
2148 compared to properly detect retransmissions and incoming retransmits are
2149 detected even if the IKE_SA is blocked (e.g. doing OCSP fetches).
2151 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports dynamic http- and ldap-based CRL
2152 fetching enabled by crlcheckinterval > 0 and caching fetched CRLs
2153 enabled by cachecrls=yes.
2155 - Added the configuration options --enable-nat-transport which enables
2156 the potentially insecure NAT traversal for IPsec transport mode and
2157 --disable-vendor-id which disables the sending of the strongSwan
2160 - Fixed a long-standing bug in the pluto IKEv1 daemon which caused
2161 a segmentation fault if a malformed payload was detected in the
2162 IKE MR2 message and pluto tried to send an encrypted notification
2165 - Added the NATT_IETF_02_N Vendor ID in order to support IKEv1 connections
2166 with Windows 2003 Server which uses a wrong VID hash.
2172 - Support of SHA2_384 hash function for protecting IKEv1
2173 negotiations and support of SHA2 signatures in X.509 certificates.
2175 - Fixed a serious bug in the computation of the SHA2-512 HMAC
2176 function. Introduced automatic self-test of all IKEv1 hash
2177 and hmac functions during pluto startup. Failure of a self-test
2178 currently issues a warning only but does not exit pluto [yet].
2180 - Support for SHA2-256/384/512 PRF and HMAC functions in IKEv2.
2182 - Full support of CA information sections. ipsec listcainfos
2183 now shows all collected crlDistributionPoints and OCSP
2186 - Support of the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for IKEv2.
2187 This feature requires the HTTP fetching capabilities of the libcurl
2188 library which must be enabled by setting the --enable-http configure
2191 - Refactored core of the IKEv2 message processing code, allowing better
2192 code reuse and separation.
2194 - Virtual IP support in IKEv2 using INTERNAL_IP4/6_ADDRESS configuration
2195 payload. Additionally, the INTERNAL_IP4/6_DNS attribute is interpreted
2196 by the requestor and installed in a resolv.conf file.
2198 - The IKEv2 daemon charon installs a route for each IPsec policy to use
2199 the correct source address even if an application does not explicitly
2202 - Integrated the EAP framework into charon which loads pluggable EAP library
2203 modules. The ipsec.conf parameter authby=eap initiates EAP authentication
2204 on the client side, while the "eap" parameter on the server side defines
2205 the EAP method to use for client authentication.
2206 A generic client side EAP-Identity module and an EAP-SIM authentication
2207 module using a third party card reader implementation are included.
2209 - Added client side support for cookies.
2211 - Integrated the fixes done at the IKEv2 interoperability bakeoff, including
2212 strict payload order, correct INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD rejection and other minor
2213 fixes to enhance interoperability with other implementations.
2219 - strongSwan now interoperates with the NCP Secure Entry Client,
2220 the Shrew Soft VPN Client, and the Cisco VPN client, doing both
2221 XAUTH and Mode Config.
2223 - UNITY attributes are now recognized and UNITY_BANNER is set
2224 to a default string.
2230 - IKEv1: Support for extended authentication (XAUTH) in combination
2231 with ISAKMP Main Mode RSA or PSK authentication. Both client and
2232 server side were implemented. Handling of user credentials can
2233 be done by a run-time loadable XAUTH module. By default user
2234 credentials are stored in ipsec.secrets.
2236 - IKEv2: Support for reauthentication when rekeying
2238 - IKEv2: Support for transport mode
2240 - fixed a lot of bugs related to byte order
2242 - various other bugfixes
2248 - IKEv1: Implementation of ModeConfig push mode via the new connection
2249 keyword modeconfig=push allows interoperability with Cisco VPN gateways.
2251 - IKEv1: The command ipsec statusall now shows "DPD active" for all
2252 ISAKMP SAs that are under active Dead Peer Detection control.
2254 - IKEv2: Charon's logging and debugging framework has been completely rewritten.
2255 Instead of logger, special printf() functions are used to directly
2256 print objects like hosts (%H) identifications (%D), certificates (%Q),
2257 etc. The number of debugging levels have been reduced to:
2259 0 (audit), 1 (control), 2 (controlmore), 3 (raw), 4 (private)
2261 The debugging levels can either be specified statically in ipsec.conf as
2264 charondebug="lib 1, cfg 3, net 2"
2266 or changed at runtime via stroke as
2268 ipsec stroke loglevel cfg 2
2274 - Implemented full support for IPv6-in-IPv6 tunnels.
2276 - Added configuration options for dead peer detection in IKEv2. dpd_action
2277 types "clear", "hold" and "restart" are supported. The dpd_timeout
2278 value is not used, as the normal retransmission policy applies to
2279 detect dead peers. The dpd_delay parameter enables sending of empty
2280 informational message to detect dead peers in case of inactivity.
2282 - Added support for preshared keys in IKEv2. PSK keys configured in
2283 ipsec.secrets are loaded. The authby parameter specifies the authentication
2284 method to authentificate ourself, the other peer may use PSK or RSA.
2286 - Changed retransmission policy to respect the keyingtries parameter.
2288 - Added private key decryption. PEM keys encrypted with AES-128/192/256
2289 or 3DES are supported.
2291 - Implemented DES/3DES algorithms in libstrongswan. 3DES can be used to
2292 encrypt IKE traffic.
2294 - Implemented SHA-256/384/512 in libstrongswan, allows usage of certificates
2295 signed with such a hash algorithm.
2297 - Added initial support for updown scripts. The actions up-host/client and
2298 down-host/client are executed. The leftfirewall=yes parameter
2299 uses the default updown script to insert dynamic firewall rules, a custom
2300 updown script may be specified with the leftupdown parameter.
2306 - Added support for the auto=route ipsec.conf parameter and the
2307 ipsec route/unroute commands for IKEv2. This allows to set up IKE_SAs and
2308 CHILD_SAs dynamically on demand when traffic is detected by the
2311 - Added support for rekeying IKE_SAs in IKEv2 using the ikelifetime parameter.
2312 As specified in IKEv2, no reauthentication is done (unlike in IKEv1), only
2313 new keys are generated using perfect forward secrecy. An optional flag
2314 which enforces reauthentication will be implemented later.
2316 - "sha" and "sha1" are now treated as synonyms in the ike= and esp=
2317 algorithm configuration statements.
2323 - Full X.509 certificate trust chain verification has been implemented.
2324 End entity certificates can be exchanged via CERT payloads. The current
2325 default is leftsendcert=always, since CERTREQ payloads are not supported
2326 yet. Optional CRLs must be imported locally into /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
2328 - Added support for leftprotoport/rightprotoport parameters in IKEv2. IKEv2
2329 would offer more possibilities for traffic selection, but the Linux kernel
2330 currently does not support it. That's why we stick with these simple
2331 ipsec.conf rules for now.
2333 - Added Dead Peer Detection (DPD) which checks liveliness of remote peer if no
2334 IKE or ESP traffic is received. DPD is currently hardcoded (dpdaction=clear,
2337 - Initial NAT traversal support in IKEv2. Charon includes NAT detection
2338 notify payloads to detect NAT routers between the peers. It switches
2339 to port 4500, uses UDP encapsulated ESP packets, handles peer address
2340 changes gracefully and sends keep alive message periodically.
2342 - Reimplemented IKE_SA state machine for charon, which allows simultaneous
2343 rekeying, more shared code, cleaner design, proper retransmission
2344 and a more extensible code base.
2346 - The mixed PSK/RSA roadwarrior detection capability introduced by the
2347 strongswan-2.7.0 release necessitated the pre-parsing of the IKE proposal
2348 payloads by the responder right before any defined IKE Main Mode state had
2349 been established. Although any form of bad proposal syntax was being correctly
2350 detected by the payload parser, the subsequent error handler didn't check
2351 the state pointer before logging current state information, causing an
2352 immediate crash of the pluto keying daemon due to a NULL pointer.
2358 - Added algorithm selection to charon: New default algorithms for
2359 ike=aes128-sha-modp2048, as both daemons support it. The default
2360 for IPsec SAs is now esp=aes128-sha,3des-md5. charon handles
2361 the ike/esp parameter the same way as pluto. As this syntax does
2362 not allow specification of a pseudo random function, the same
2363 algorithm as for integrity is used (currently sha/md5). Supported
2365 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256
2366 Integrity/PRF: md5, sha (using hmac)
2367 DH-Groups: modp768, 1024, 1536, 2048, 4096, 8192
2369 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256, 3des, blowfish128,
2370 blowfish192, blowfish256
2371 Integrity: md5, sha1
2372 More IKE encryption algorithms will come after porting libcrypto into
2375 - initial support for rekeying CHILD_SAs using IKEv2. Currently no
2376 perfect forward secrecy is used. The rekeying parameters rekey,
2377 rekeymargin, rekeyfuzz and keylife from ipsec.conf are now supported
2378 when using IKEv2. WARNING: charon currently is unable to handle
2379 simultaneous rekeying. To avoid such a situation, use a large
2380 rekeyfuzz, or even better, set rekey=no on one peer.
2382 - support for host2host, net2net, host2net (roadwarrior) tunnels
2383 using predefined RSA certificates (see uml scenarios for
2384 configuration examples).
2386 - new build environment featuring autotools. Features such
2387 as HTTP, LDAP and smartcard support may be enabled using
2388 the ./configure script. Changing install directories
2389 is possible, too. See ./configure --help for more details.
2391 - better integration of charon with ipsec starter, which allows
2392 (almost) transparent operation with both daemons. charon
2393 handles ipsec commands up, down, status, statusall, listall,
2394 listcerts and allows proper load, reload and delete of connections
2401 - initial support of the IKEv2 protocol. Connections in
2402 ipsec.conf designated by keyexchange=ikev2 are negotiated
2403 by the new IKEv2 charon keying daemon whereas those marked
2404 by keyexchange=ikev1 or the default keyexchange=ike are
2405 handled thy the IKEv1 pluto keying daemon. Currently only
2406 a limited subset of functions are available with IKEv2
2407 (Default AES encryption, authentication based on locally
2408 imported X.509 certificates, unencrypted private RSA keys
2409 in PKCS#1 file format, limited functionality of the ipsec
2416 - the dynamic iptables rules from the _updown_x509 template
2417 for KLIPS and the _updown_policy template for NETKEY have
2418 been merged into the default _updown script. The existing
2419 left|rightfirewall keyword causes the automatic insertion
2420 and deletion of ACCEPT rules for tunneled traffic upon
2421 the successful setup and teardown of an IPsec SA, respectively.
2422 left|rightfirwall can be used with KLIPS under any Linux 2.4
2423 kernel or with NETKEY under a Linux kernel version >= 2.6.16
2424 in conjunction with iptables >= 1.3.5. For NETKEY under a Linux
2425 kernel version < 2.6.16 which does not support IPsec policy
2426 matching yet, please continue to use a copy of the _updown_espmark
2427 template loaded via the left|rightupdown keyword.
2429 - a new left|righthostaccess keyword has been introduced which
2430 can be used in conjunction with left|rightfirewall and the
2431 default _updown script. By default leftfirewall=yes inserts
2432 a bi-directional iptables FORWARD rule for a local client network
2433 with a netmask different from 255.255.255.255 (single host).
2434 This does not allow to access the VPN gateway host via its
2435 internal network interface which is part of the client subnet
2436 because an iptables INPUT and OUTPUT rule would be required.
2437 lefthostaccess=yes will cause this additional ACCEPT rules to
2440 - mixed PSK|RSA roadwarriors are now supported. The ISAKMP proposal
2441 payload is preparsed in order to find out whether the roadwarrior
2442 requests PSK or RSA so that a matching connection candidate can
2449 - the new _updown_policy template allows ipsec policy based
2450 iptables firewall rules. Required are iptables version
2451 >= 1.3.5 and linux kernel >= 2.6.16. This script obsoletes
2452 the _updown_espmark template, so that no INPUT mangle rules
2453 are required any more.
2455 - added support of DPD restart mode
2457 - ipsec starter now allows the use of wildcards in include
2458 statements as e.g. in "include /etc/my_ipsec/*.conf".
2459 Patch courtesy of Matthias Haas.
2461 - the Netscape OID 'employeeNumber' is now recognized and can be
2462 used as a Relative Distinguished Name in certificates.
2468 - /etc/init.d/ipsec or /etc/rc.d/ipsec is now a copy of the ipsec
2469 command and not of ipsec setup any more.
2471 - ipsec starter now supports AH authentication in conjunction with
2472 ESP encryption. AH authentication is configured in ipsec.conf
2473 via the auth=ah parameter.
2475 - The command ipsec scencrypt|scdecrypt <args> is now an alias for
2476 ipsec whack --scencrypt|scdecrypt <args>.
2478 - get_sa_info() now determines for the native netkey IPsec stack
2479 the exact time of the last use of an active eroute. This information
2480 is used by the Dead Peer Detection algorithm and is also displayed by
2481 the ipsec status command.
2487 - running under the native Linux 2.6 IPsec stack, the function
2488 get_sa_info() is called by ipsec auto --status to display the current
2489 number of transmitted bytes per IPsec SA.
2491 - get_sa_info() is also used by the Dead Peer Detection process to detect
2492 recent ESP activity. If ESP traffic was received from the peer within
2493 the last dpd_delay interval then no R_Y_THERE notification must be sent.
2495 - strongSwan now supports the Relative Distinguished Name "unstructuredName"
2496 in ID_DER_ASN1_DN identities. The following notations are possible:
2498 rightid="unstructuredName=John Doe"
2499 rightid="UN=John Doe"
2501 - fixed a long-standing bug which caused PSK-based roadwarrior connections
2502 to segfault in the function id.c:same_id() called by keys.c:get_secret()
2503 if an FQDN, USER_FQDN, or Key ID was defined, as in the following example.
2510 - the ipsec command now supports most ipsec auto commands (e.g. ipsec listall).
2512 - ipsec starter didn't set host_addr and client.addr ports in whack msg.
2514 - in order to guarantee backwards-compatibility with the script-based
2515 auto function (e.g. auto --replace), the ipsec starter scripts stores
2516 the defaultroute information in the temporary file /var/run/ipsec.info.
2518 - The compile-time option USE_XAUTH_VID enables the sending of the XAUTH
2519 Vendor ID which is expected by Cisco PIX 7 boxes that act as IKE Mode Config
2522 - the ipsec starter now also recognizes the parameters authby=never and
2523 type=passthrough|pass|drop|reject.
2529 - ipsec starter now supports the also parameter which allows
2530 a modular structure of the connection definitions. Thus
2531 "ipsec start" is now ready to replace "ipsec setup".
2537 - Mathieu Lafon's popular ipsec starter tool has been added to the
2538 strongSwan distribution. Many thanks go to Stephan Scholz from astaro
2539 for his integration work. ipsec starter is a C program which is going
2540 to replace the various shell and awk starter scripts (setup, _plutoload,
2541 _plutostart, _realsetup, _startklips, _confread, and auto). Since
2542 ipsec.conf is now parsed only once, the starting of multiple tunnels is
2543 accelerated tremedously.
2545 - Added support of %defaultroute to the ipsec starter. If the IP address
2546 changes, a HUP signal to the ipsec starter will automatically
2547 reload pluto's connections.
2549 - moved most compile time configurations from pluto/Makefile to
2550 Makefile.inc by defining the options USE_LIBCURL, USE_LDAP,
2551 USE_SMARTCARD, and USE_NAT_TRAVERSAL_TRANSPORT_MODE.
2553 - removed the ipsec verify and ipsec newhostkey commands
2555 - fixed some 64-bit issues in formatted print statements
2557 - The scepclient functionality implementing the Simple Certificate
2558 Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) is nearly complete but hasn't been
2565 - CA certicates are now automatically loaded from a smartcard
2566 or USB crypto token and appear in the ipsec auto --listcacerts
2573 - when using "ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>" with a PKCS#11
2574 library that does not support the C_Encrypt() Cryptoki
2575 function (e.g. OpenSC), the RSA encryption is done in
2576 software using the public key fetched from the smartcard.
2578 - The scepclient function now allows to define the
2579 validity of a self-signed certificate using the --days,
2580 --startdate, and --enddate options. The default validity
2581 has been changed from one year to five years.
2587 - the config setup parameter pkcs11proxy=yes opens pluto's PKCS#11
2588 interface to other applications for RSA encryption and decryption
2589 via the whack interface. Notation:
2591 ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>
2592 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2593 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2596 ipsec whack --scdecrypt <data>
2597 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2598 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2601 The default setting for inbase and outbase is hex.
2603 The new proxy interface can be used for securing symmetric
2604 encryption keys required by the cryptoloop or dm-crypt
2605 disk encryption schemes, especially in the case when
2606 pkcs11keepstate=yes causes pluto to lock the pkcs11 slot
2609 - if the file /etc/ipsec.secrets is lacking during the startup of
2610 pluto then the root-readable file /etc/ipsec.d/private/myKey.der
2611 containing a 2048 bit RSA private key and a matching self-signed
2612 certificate stored in the file /etc/ipsec.d/certs/selfCert.der
2613 is automatically generated by calling the function
2615 ipsec scepclient --out pkcs1 --out cert-self
2617 scepclient was written by Jan Hutter and Martin Willi, students
2618 at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, Switzerland.
2624 - the current extension of the PKCS#7 framework introduced
2625 a parsing error in PKCS#7 wrapped X.509 certificates that are
2626 e.g. transmitted by Windows XP when multi-level CAs are used.
2627 the parsing syntax has been fixed.
2629 - added a patch by Gerald Richter which tolerates multiple occurrences
2630 of the ipsec0 interface when using KLIPS.
2636 - with gawk-3.1.4 the word "default2 has become a protected
2637 keyword for use in switch statements and cannot be used any
2638 more in the strongSwan scripts. This problem has been
2639 solved by renaming "default" to "defaults" and "setdefault"
2640 in the scripts _confread and auto, respectively.
2642 - introduced the parameter leftsendcert with the values
2644 always|yes (the default, always send a cert)
2645 ifasked (send the cert only upon a cert request)
2646 never|no (never send a cert, used for raw RSA keys and
2649 - fixed the initialization of the ESP key length to a default of
2650 128 bits in the case that the peer does not send a key length
2651 attribute for AES encryption.
2653 - applied Herbert Xu's uniqueIDs patch
2655 - applied Herbert Xu's CLOEXEC patches
2661 - CRLs can now be cached also in the case when the issuer's
2662 certificate does not contain a subjectKeyIdentifier field.
2663 In that case the subjectKeyIdentifier is computed by pluto as the
2664 160 bit SHA-1 hash of the issuer's public key in compliance
2665 with section 4.2.1.2 of RFC 3280.
2667 - Fixed a bug introduced by strongswan-2.5.1 which eliminated
2668 not only multiple Quick Modes of a given connection but also
2669 multiple connections between two security gateways.
2675 - Under the native IPsec of the Linux 2.6 kernel, a %trap eroute
2676 installed either by setting auto=route in ipsec.conf or by
2677 a connection put into hold, generates an XFRM_AQUIRE event
2678 for each packet that wants to use the not-yet exisiting
2679 tunnel. Up to now each XFRM_AQUIRE event led to an entry in
2680 the Quick Mode queue, causing multiple IPsec SA to be
2681 established in rapid succession. Starting with strongswan-2.5.1
2682 only a single IPsec SA is established per host-pair connection.
2684 - Right after loading the PKCS#11 module, all smartcard slots are
2685 searched for certificates. The result can be viewed using
2688 ipsec auto --listcards
2690 The certificate objects found in the slots are numbered
2691 starting with #1, #2, etc. This position number can be used to address
2692 certificates (leftcert=%smartcard) and keys (: PIN %smartcard)
2693 in ipsec.conf and ipsec.secrets, respectively:
2695 %smartcard (selects object #1)
2696 %smartcard#1 (selects object #1)
2697 %smartcard#3 (selects object #3)
2699 As an alternative the existing retrieval scheme can be used:
2701 %smartcard:45 (selects object with id=45)
2702 %smartcard0 (selects first object in slot 0)
2703 %smartcard4:45 (selects object in slot 4 with id=45)
2705 - Depending on the settings of CKA_SIGN and CKA_DECRYPT
2706 private key flags either C_Sign() or C_Decrypt() is used
2707 to generate a signature.
2709 - The output buffer length parameter siglen in C_Sign()
2710 is now initialized to the actual size of the output
2711 buffer prior to the function call. This fixes the
2712 CKR_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL error that could occur when using
2713 the OpenSC PKCS#11 module.
2715 - Changed the initialization of the PKCS#11 CK_MECHANISM in
2716 C_SignInit() to mech = { CKM_RSA_PKCS, NULL_PTR, 0 }.
2718 - Refactored the RSA public/private key code and transferred it
2719 from keys.c to the new pkcs1.c file as a preparatory step
2720 towards the release of the SCEP client.
2726 - The loading of a PKCS#11 smartcard library module during
2727 runtime does not require OpenSC library functions any more
2728 because the corresponding code has been integrated into
2729 smartcard.c. Also the RSAREF pkcs11 header files have been
2730 included in a newly created pluto/rsaref directory so that
2731 no external include path has to be defined any longer.
2733 - A long-awaited feature has been implemented at last:
2734 The local caching of CRLs fetched via HTTP or LDAP, activated
2735 by the parameter cachecrls=yes in the config setup section
2736 of ipsec.conf. The dynamically fetched CRLs are stored under
2737 a unique file name containing the issuer's subjectKeyID
2738 in /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
2740 - Applied a one-line patch courtesy of Michael Richardson
2741 from the Openswan project which fixes the kernel-oops
2742 in KLIPS when an snmp daemon is running on the same box.
2748 - Eliminated null length CRL distribution point strings.
2750 - Fixed a trust path evaluation bug introduced with 2.4.3
2756 - Improved the joint OCSP / CRL revocation policy.
2757 OCSP responses have precedence over CRL entries.
2759 - Introduced support of CRLv2 reason codes.
2761 - Fixed a bug with key-pad equipped readers which caused
2762 pluto to prompt for the pin via the console when the first
2763 occasion to enter the pin via the key-pad was missed.
2765 - When pluto is built with LDAP_V3 enabled, the library
2766 liblber required by newer versions of openldap is now
2773 - Added the _updown_espmark template which requires all
2774 incoming ESP traffic to be marked with a default mark
2777 - Introduced the pkcs11keepstate parameter in the config setup
2778 section of ipsec.conf. With pkcs11keepstate=yes the PKCS#11
2779 session and login states are kept as long as possible during
2780 the lifetime of pluto. This means that a PIN entry via a key
2781 pad has to be done only once.
2783 - Introduced the pkcs11module parameter in the config setup
2784 section of ipsec.conf which specifies the PKCS#11 module
2785 to be used with smart cards. Example:
2787 pkcs11module=/usr/lib/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.lo
2789 - Added support of smartcard readers equipped with a PIN pad.
2791 - Added patch by Jay Pfeifer which detects when netkey
2792 modules have been statically built into the Linux 2.6 kernel.
2794 - Added two patches by Herbert Xu. The first uses ip xfrm
2795 instead of setkey to flush the IPsec policy database. The
2796 second sets the optional flag in inbound IPComp SAs only.
2798 - Applied Ulrich Weber's patch which fixes an interoperability
2799 problem between native IPsec and KLIPS systems caused by
2800 setting the replay window to 32 instead of 0 for ipcomp.
2806 - Fixed a bug which caused an unwanted Mode Config request
2807 to be initiated in the case where "right" was used to denote
2808 the local side in ipsec.conf and "left" the remote side,
2809 contrary to the recommendation that "right" be remote and
2816 - updated Vendor ID to strongSwan-2.4.0
2818 - updated copyright statement to include David Buechi and
2825 - strongSwan now communicates with attached smartcards and
2826 USB crypto tokens via the standardized PKCS #11 interface.
2827 By default the OpenSC library from www.opensc.org is used
2828 but any other PKCS#11 library could be dynamically linked.
2829 strongSwan's PKCS#11 API was implemented by David Buechi
2830 and Michael Meier, both graduates of the Zurich University
2831 of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland.
2833 - When a %trap eroute is triggered by an outgoing IP packet
2834 then the native IPsec stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel [often/
2835 always?] returns an XFRM_ACQUIRE message with an undefined
2836 protocol family field and the connection setup fails.
2837 As a workaround IPv4 (AF_INET) is now assumed.
2839 - the results of the UML test scenarios are now enhanced
2840 with block diagrams of the virtual network topology used
2841 in a particular test.
2847 - fixed IV used to decrypt informational messages.
2848 This bug was introduced with Mode Config functionality.
2850 - fixed NCP Vendor ID.
2852 - undid one of Ulrich Weber's maximum udp size patches
2853 because it caused a segmentation fault with NAT-ed
2856 - added UML scenarios wildcards and attr-cert which
2857 demonstrate the implementation of IPsec policies based
2858 on wildcard parameters contained in Distinguished Names and
2859 on X.509 attribute certificates, respectively.
2865 - Added basic Mode Config functionality
2867 - Added Mathieu Lafon's patch which upgrades the status of
2868 the NAT-Traversal implementation to RFC 3947.
2870 - The _startklips script now also loads the xfrm4_tunnel
2873 - Added Ulrich Weber's netlink replay window size and
2874 maximum udp size patches.
2876 - UML testing now uses the Linux 2.6.10 UML kernel by default.
2882 - Eric Marchionni and Patrik Rayo, both recent graduates from
2883 the Zuercher Hochschule Winterthur in Switzerland, created a
2884 User-Mode-Linux test setup for strongSwan. For more details
2885 please read the INSTALL and README documents in the testing
2888 - Full support of group attributes based on X.509 attribute
2889 certificates. Attribute certificates can be generated
2890 using the openac facility. For more details see
2894 The group attributes can be used in connection definitions
2895 in order to give IPsec access to specific user groups.
2896 This is done with the new parameter left|rightgroups as in
2898 rightgroups="Research, Sales"
2900 giving access to users possessing the group attributes
2901 Research or Sales, only.
2903 - In Quick Mode clients with subnet mask /32 are now
2904 coded as IP_V4_ADDRESS or IP_V6_ADDRESS. This should
2905 fix rekeying problems with the SafeNet/SoftRemote and NCP
2906 Secure Entry Clients.
2908 - Changed the defaults of the ikelifetime and keylife parameters
2909 to 3h and 1h, respectively. The maximum allowable values are
2910 now both set to 24 h.
2912 - Suppressed notification wars between two IPsec peers that
2913 could e.g. be triggered by incorrect ISAKMP encryption.
2915 - Public RSA keys can now have identical IDs if either the
2916 issuing CA or the serial number is different. The serial
2917 number of a certificate is now shown by the command
2919 ipsec auto --listpubkeys
2925 - Added Tuomo Soini's sourceip feature which allows a strongSwan
2926 roadwarrior to use a fixed Virtual IP (see README section 2.6)
2927 and reduces the well-known four tunnel case on VPN gateways to
2928 a single tunnel definition (see README section 2.4).
2930 - Fixed a bug occurring with NAT-Traversal enabled when the responder
2931 suddenly turns initiator and the initiator cannot find a matching
2932 connection because of the floated IKE port 4500.
2934 - Removed misleading ipsec verify command from barf.
2936 - Running under the native IP stack, ipsec --version now shows
2937 the Linux kernel version (courtesy to the Openswan project).
2943 - Introduced the ipsec auto --listalgs monitoring command which lists
2944 all currently registered IKE and ESP algorithms.
2946 - Fixed a bug in the ESP algorithm selection occurring when the strict flag
2947 is set and the first proposed transform does not match.
2949 - Fixed another deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex,
2950 occurring when a smartcard is present.
2952 - Prevented that a superseded Phase1 state can trigger a DPD_TIMEOUT event.
2954 - Fixed the printing of the notification names (null)
2956 - Applied another of Herbert Xu's Netlink patches.
2962 - Support of Dead Peer Detection. The connection parameter
2964 dpdaction=clear|hold
2966 activates DPD for the given connection.
2968 - The default Opportunistic Encryption (OE) policy groups are not
2969 automatically included anymore. Those wishing to activate OE can include
2970 the policy group with the following statement in ipsec.conf:
2972 include /etc/ipsec.d/examples/oe.conf
2974 The default for [right|left]rsasigkey is now set to %cert.
2976 - strongSwan now has a Vendor ID of its own which can be activated
2977 using the compile option VENDORID
2979 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch which sets the compression algorithm correctly.
2981 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch fixing an ESPINUDP problem
2983 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch setting source/destination port numbers.
2985 - Reapplied one of Herbert Xu's NAT-Traversal patches which got
2986 lost during the migration from SuperFreeS/WAN.
2988 - Fixed a deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex.
2990 - Fixed the unsharing of alg parameters when instantiating group
2997 - Thomas Walpuski made me aware of a potential DoS attack via
2998 a PKCS#7-wrapped certificate bundle which could overwrite valid CA
2999 certificates in Pluto's authority certificate store. This vulnerability
3000 was fixed by establishing trust in CA candidate certificates up to a
3001 trusted root CA prior to insertion into Pluto's chained list.
3003 - replaced the --assign option by the -v option in the auto awk script
3004 in order to make it run with mawk under debian/woody.
3010 - Split of the status information between ipsec auto --status (concise)
3011 and ipsec auto --statusall (verbose). Both commands can be used with
3012 an optional connection selector:
3014 ipsec auto --status[all] <connection_name>
3016 - Added the description of X.509 related features to the ipsec_auto(8)
3019 - Hardened the ASN.1 parser in debug mode, especially the printing
3020 of malformed distinguished names.
3022 - The size of an RSA public key received in a certificate is now restricted to
3024 512 bits <= modulus length <= 8192 bits.
3026 - Fixed the debug mode enumeration.
3032 - Fixed another PKCS#7 vulnerability which could lead to an
3033 endless loop while following the X.509 trust chain.
3039 - Fixed the PKCS#7 vulnerability discovered by Thomas Walpuski
3040 that accepted end certificates having identical issuer and subject
3041 distinguished names in a multi-tier X.509 trust chain.
3047 - Removed all remaining references to ipsec_netlink.h in KLIPS.
3053 - The new "ca" section allows to define the following parameters:
3056 cacert=koolCA.pem # cacert of kool CA
3057 ocspuri=http://ocsp.kool.net:8001 # ocsp server
3058 ldapserver=ldap.kool.net # default ldap server
3059 crluri=http://www.kool.net/kool.crl # crl distribution point
3060 crluri2="ldap:///O=Kool, C= .." # crl distribution point #2
3061 auto=add # add, ignore
3063 The ca definitions can be monitored via the command
3065 ipsec auto --listcainfos
3067 - Fixed cosmetic corruption of /proc filesystem by integrating
3068 D. Hugh Redelmeier's freeswan-2.06 kernel fixes.
3074 - Added support for the 818043 NAT-Traversal update of Microsoft's
3075 Windows 2000/XP IPsec client which sends an ID_FQDN during Quick Mode.
3077 - A symbolic link to libcrypto is now added in the kernel sources
3078 during kernel compilation
3080 - Fixed a couple of 64 bit issues (mostly casts to int).
3081 Thanks to Ken Bantoft who checked my sources on a 64 bit platform.
3083 - Replaced s[n]printf() statements in the kernel by ipsec_snprintf().
3084 Credits go to D. Hugh Redelmeier, Michael Richardson, and Sam Sgro
3085 of the FreeS/WAN team who solved this problem with the 2.4.25 kernel.
3091 - an empty ASN.1 SEQUENCE OF or SET OF object (e.g. a subjectAltName
3092 certificate extension which contains no generalName item) can cause
3093 a pluto crash. This bug has been fixed. Additionally the ASN.1 parser has
3094 been hardened to make it more robust against malformed ASN.1 objects.
3096 - applied Herbert Xu's NAT-T patches which fixes NAT-T under the native
3097 Linux 2.6 IPsec stack.
3103 - based on freeswan-2.04, x509-1.5.3, nat-0.6c, alg-0.8.1rc12