4 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by specific XAuth usernames
5 and EAP identities (since 5.0.3), and PEM files (since 4.1.11). The crash
6 was caused by insufficient error handling in the is_asn1() function.
7 The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-5018.
9 - The new charon-cmd command line IKE client can establish road warrior
10 connections using IKEv1 or IKEv2 with different authentication profiles.
11 It does not depend on any configuration files and can be configured using a
12 few simple command line options.
14 - The kernel-pfroute networking backend has been greatly improved. It now
15 can install virtual IPs on TUN devices on OS X and FreeBSD, allowing these
16 systems to act as a client in common road warrior scenarios.
18 - The new kernel-libipsec plugin uses TUN devices and libipsec to provide IPsec
19 processing in userland on Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
21 - The eap-radius plugin can now serve as an XAuth backend called xauth-radius,
22 directly verifying XAuth credentials using RADIUS User-Name/User-Password
23 attributes. This is more efficient than the existing xauth-eap+eap-radius
24 combination, and allows RADIUS servers without EAP support to act as AAA
27 - The new osx-attr plugin installs configuration attributes (currently DNS
28 servers) via SystemConfiguration on Mac OS X. The keychain plugin provides
29 certificates from the OS X keychain service.
31 - The sshkey plugin parses SSH public keys, which, together with the --agent
32 option for charon-cmd, allows the use of ssh-agent for authentication.
33 To configure SSH keys in ipsec.conf the left|rightrsasigkey options are
34 replaced with left|rightsigkey, which now take public keys in one of three
35 formats: SSH (RFC 4253, ssh: prefix), DNSKEY (RFC 3110, dns: prefix), and
36 PKCS#1 (the default, no prefix).
38 - Extraction of certificates and private keys from PKCS#12 files is now provided
39 by the new pkcs12 plugin or the openssl plugin. charon-cmd (--p12) as well
40 as charon (via P12 token in ipsec.secrets) can make use of this.
42 - IKEv2 can now negotiate transport mode and IPComp in NAT situations.
44 - IKEv2 exchange initiators now properly close an established IKE or CHILD_SA
45 on error conditions using an additional exchange, keeping state in sync
48 - Using a SQL database interface a Trusted Network Connect (TNC) Policy Manager
49 can generate specific measurement workitems for an arbitrary number of
50 Integrity Measurement Verifiers (IMVs) based on the history of the VPN user
53 - Several core classes in libstrongswan are now tested with unit tests. These
54 can be enabled with --enable-unit-tests and run with 'make check'. Coverage
55 reports can be generated with --enable-coverage and 'make coverage' (this
56 disables any optimization, so it should not be enabled when building
59 - The leak-detective developer tool has been greatly improved. It works much
60 faster/stabler with multiple threads, does not use deprecated malloc hooks
61 anymore and has been ported to OS X.
63 - chunk_hash() is now based on SipHash-2-4 with a random key. This provides
64 better distribution and prevents hash flooding attacks when used with
67 - All default plugins implement the get_features() method to define features
68 and their dependencies. The plugin loader has been improved, so that plugins
69 in a custom load statement can be ordered freely or to express preferences
70 without being affected by dependencies between plugin features.
72 - A centralized thread can take care for watching multiple file descriptors
73 concurrently. This removes the need for a dedicated listener threads in
74 various plugins. The number of "reserved" threads for such tasks has been
75 reduced to about five, depending on the plugin configuration.
77 - Plugins that can be controlled by a UNIX socket IPC mechanism gained network
78 transparency. Third party applications querying these plugins now can use
79 TCP connections from a different host.
81 - libipsec now supports AES-GCM.
87 - Fixed a security vulnerability in the openssl plugin which was reported by
88 Kevin Wojtysiak. The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-2944.
89 Before the fix, if the openssl plugin's ECDSA signature verification was used,
90 due to a misinterpretation of the error code returned by the OpenSSL
91 ECDSA_verify() function, an empty or zeroed signature was accepted as a
94 - The handling of a couple of other non-security relevant openssl return codes
97 - The tnc_ifmap plugin now publishes virtual IPv4 and IPv6 addresses via its
98 TCG TNC IF-MAP 2.1 interface.
100 - The charon.initiator_only option causes charon to ignore IKE initiation
103 - The openssl plugin can now use the openssl-fips library.
109 - The new ipseckey plugin enables authentication based on trustworthy public
110 keys stored as IPSECKEY resource records in the DNS and protected by DNSSEC.
111 To do so it uses a DNSSEC enabled resolver, like the one provided by the new
112 unbound plugin, which is based on libldns and libunbound. Both plugins were
113 created by Reto Guadagnini.
115 - Implemented the TCG TNC IF-IMV 1.4 draft making access requestor identities
116 available to an IMV. The OS IMV stores the AR identity together with the
117 device ID in the attest database.
119 - The openssl plugin now uses the AES-NI accelerated version of AES-GCM
120 if the hardware supports it.
122 - The eap-radius plugin can now assign virtual IPs to IKE clients using the
123 Framed-IP-Address attribute by using the "%radius" named pool in the
124 rightsourceip ipsec.conf option. Cisco Banner attributes are forwarded to
125 Unity-capable IKEv1 clients during mode config. charon now sends Interim
126 Accounting updates if requested by the RADIUS server, reports
127 sent/received packets in Accounting messages, and adds a Terminate-Cause
130 - The recently introduced "ipsec listcounters" command can report connection
131 specific counters by passing a connection name, and global or connection
132 counters can be reset by the "ipsec resetcounters" command.
134 - The strongSwan libpttls library provides an experimental implementation of
135 PT-TLS (RFC 6876), a Posture Transport Protocol over TLS.
137 - The charon systime-fix plugin can disable certificate lifetime checks on
138 embedded systems if the system time is obviously out of sync after bootup.
139 Certificates lifetimes get checked once the system time gets sane, closing
140 or reauthenticating connections using expired certificates.
142 - The "ikedscp" ipsec.conf option can set DiffServ code points on outgoing
145 - The new xauth-noauth plugin allows to use basic RSA or PSK authentication with
146 clients that cannot be configured without XAuth authentication. The plugin
147 simply concludes the XAuth exchange successfully without actually performing
148 any authentication. Therefore, to use this backend it has to be selected
149 explicitly with rightauth2=xauth-noauth.
151 - The new charon-tkm IKEv2 daemon delegates security critical operations to a
152 separate process. This has the benefit that the network facing daemon has no
153 knowledge of keying material used to protect child SAs. Thus subverting
154 charon-tkm does not result in the compromise of cryptographic keys.
155 The extracted functionality has been implemented from scratch in a minimal TCB
156 (trusted computing base) in the Ada programming language. Further information
157 can be found at http://www.codelabs.ch/tkm/.
162 - Implemented all IETF Standard PA-TNC attributes and an OS IMC/IMV
163 pair using them to transfer operating system information.
165 - The new "ipsec listcounters" command prints a list of global counter values
166 about received and sent IKE messages and rekeyings.
168 - A new lookip plugin can perform fast lookup of tunnel information using a
169 clients virtual IP and can send notifications about established or deleted
170 tunnels. The "ipsec lookip" command can be used to query such information
171 or receive notifications.
173 - The new error-notify plugin catches some common error conditions and allows
174 an external application to receive notifications for them over a UNIX socket.
176 - IKE proposals can now use a PRF algorithm different to that defined for
177 integrity protection. If an algorithm with a "prf" prefix is defined
178 explicitly (such as prfsha1 or prfsha256), no implicit PRF algorithm based on
179 the integrity algorithm is added to the proposal.
181 - The pkcs11 plugin can now load leftcert certificates from a smartcard for a
182 specific ipsec.conf conn section and cacert CA certificates for a specific ca
185 - The load-tester plugin gained additional options for certificate generation
186 and can load keys and multiple CA certificates from external files. It can
187 install a dedicated outer IP address for each tunnel and tunnel initiation
188 batches can be triggered and monitored externally using the
189 "ipsec load-tester" tool.
191 - PKCS#7 container parsing has been modularized, and the openssl plugin
192 gained an alternative implementation to decrypt and verify such files.
193 In contrast to our own DER parser, OpenSSL can handle BER files, which is
194 required for interoperability of our scepclient with EJBCA.
196 - Support for the proprietary IKEv1 fragmentation extension has been added.
197 Fragments are always handled on receipt but only sent if supported by the peer
198 and if enabled with the new fragmentation ipsec.conf option.
200 - IKEv1 in charon can now parse certificates received in PKCS#7 containers and
201 supports NAT traversal as used by Windows clients. Patches courtesy of
204 - The new rdrand plugin provides a high quality / high performance random
205 source using the Intel rdrand instruction found on Ivy Bridge processors.
207 - The integration test environment was updated and now uses KVM and reproducible
208 guest images based on Debian.
214 - Introduced the sending of the standard IETF Assessment Result
215 PA-TNC attribute by all strongSwan Integrity Measurement Verifiers.
217 - Extended PTS Attestation IMC/IMV pair to provide full evidence of
218 the Linux IMA measurement process. All pertinent file information
219 of a Linux OS can be collected and stored in an SQL database.
221 - The PA-TNC and PB-TNC protocols can now process huge data payloads
222 >64 kB by distributing PA-TNC attributes over multiple PA-TNC messages
223 and these messages over several PB-TNC batches. As long as no
224 consolidated recommandation from all IMVs can be obtained, the TNC
225 server requests more client data by sending an empty SDATA batch.
227 - The rightgroups2 ipsec.conf option can require group membership during
228 a second authentication round, for example during XAuth authentication
229 against a RADIUS server.
231 - The xauth-pam backend can authenticate IKEv1 XAuth and Hybrid authenticated
232 clients against any PAM service. The IKEv2 eap-gtc plugin does not use
233 PAM directly anymore, but can use any XAuth backend to verify credentials,
236 - The new unity plugin brings support for some parts of the IKEv1 Cisco Unity
237 Extension. As client, charon narrows traffic selectors to the received
238 Split-Include attributes and automatically installs IPsec bypass policies
239 for received Local-LAN attributes. As server, charon sends Split-Include
240 attributes for leftsubnet definitions containing multiple subnets to Unity-
243 - An EAP-Nak payload is returned by clients if the gateway requests an EAP
244 method that the client does not support. Clients can also request a specific
245 EAP method by configuring that method with leftauth.
247 - The eap-dynamic plugin handles EAP-Nak payloads returned by clients and uses
248 these to select a different EAP method supported/requested by the client.
249 The plugin initially requests the first registered method or the first method
250 configured with charon.plugins.eap-dynamic.preferred.
252 - The new left/rightdns options specify connection specific DNS servers to
253 request/respond in IKEv2 configuration payloads or IKEv2 mode config. leftdns
254 can be any (comma separated) combination of %config4 and %config6 to request
255 multiple servers, both for IPv4 and IPv6. rightdns takes a list of DNS server
256 IP addresses to return.
258 - The left/rightsourceip options now accept multiple addresses or pools.
259 leftsourceip can be any (comma separated) combination of %config4, %config6
260 or fixed IP addresses to request. rightsourceip accepts multiple explicitly
261 specified or referenced named pools.
263 - Multiple connections can now share a single address pool when they use the
264 same definition in one of the rightsourceip pools.
266 - The options charon.interfaces_ignore and charon.interfaces_use allow one to
267 configure the network interfaces used by the daemon.
269 - The kernel-netlink plugin supports the charon.install_virtual_ip_on option,
270 which specifies the interface on which virtual IP addresses will be installed.
271 If it is not specified the current behavior of using the outbound interface
274 - The kernel-netlink plugin tries to keep the current source address when
275 looking for valid routes to reach other hosts.
277 - The autotools build has been migrated to use a config.h header. strongSwan
278 development headers will get installed during "make install" if
279 --with-dev-headers has been passed to ./configure.
281 - All crypto primitives gained return values for most operations, allowing
282 crypto backends to fail, for example when using hardware accelerators.
288 - The charon IKE daemon gained experimental support for the IKEv1 protocol.
289 Pluto has been removed from the 5.x series, and unless strongSwan is
290 configured with --disable-ikev1 or --disable-ikev2, charon handles both
291 keying protocols. The feature-set of IKEv1 in charon is almost on par with
292 pluto, but currently does not support AH or bundled AH+ESP SAs. Beside
293 RSA/ECDSA, PSK and XAuth, charon also supports the Hybrid authentication
294 mode. Informations for interoperability and migration is available at
295 http://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/CharonPlutoIKEv1.
297 - Charon's bus_t has been refactored so that loggers and other listeners are
298 now handled separately. The single lock was previously cause for deadlocks
299 if extensive listeners, such as the one provided by the updown plugin, wanted
300 to acquire locks that were held by other threads which in turn tried to log
301 messages, and thus were waiting to acquire the same lock currently held by
302 the thread calling the listener.
303 The implemented changes also allow the use of a read/write-lock for the
304 loggers which increases performance if multiple loggers are registered.
305 Besides several interface changes this last bit also changes the semantics
306 for loggers as these may now be called by multiple threads at the same time.
308 - Source routes are reinstalled if interfaces are reactivated or IP addresses
311 - The thread pool (processor_t) now has more control over the lifecycle of
312 a job (see job.h for details). In particular, it now controls the destruction
313 of jobs after execution and the cancellation of jobs during shutdown. Due to
314 these changes the requeueing feature, previously available to callback_job_t
315 only, is now available to all jobs (in addition to a new rescheduling
318 - In addition to trustchain key strength definitions for different public key
319 systems, the rightauth option now takes a list of signature hash algorithms
320 considered save for trustchain validation. For example, the setting
321 rightauth=rsa-2048-ecdsa-256-sha256-sha384-sha512 requires a trustchain
322 that uses at least RSA-2048 or ECDSA-256 keys and certificate signatures
323 using SHA-256 or better.
329 - Fixed a security vulnerability in the gmp plugin. If this plugin was used
330 for RSA signature verification an empty or zeroed signature was handled as
333 - Fixed several issues with reauthentication and address updates.
339 - The tnc-pdp plugin implements a RADIUS server interface allowing
340 a strongSwan TNC server to act as a Policy Decision Point.
342 - The eap-radius authentication backend enforces Session-Timeout attributes
343 using RFC4478 repeated authentication and acts upon RADIUS Dynamic
344 Authorization extensions, RFC 5176. Currently supported are disconnect
345 requests and CoA messages containing a Session-Timeout.
347 - The eap-radius plugin can forward arbitrary RADIUS attributes from and to
348 clients using custom IKEv2 notify payloads. The new radattr plugin reads
349 attributes to include from files and prints received attributes to the
352 - Added support for untruncated MD5 and SHA1 HMACs in ESP as used in
355 - The cmac plugin implements the AES-CMAC-96 and AES-CMAC-PRF-128 algorithms
356 as defined in RFC 4494 and RFC 4615, respectively.
358 - The resolve plugin automatically installs nameservers via resolvconf(8),
359 if it is installed, instead of modifying /etc/resolv.conf directly.
361 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports now raw RSA public keys in RFC 3110
362 DNSKEY and PKCS#1 file format.
368 - Upgraded the TCG IF-IMC and IF-IMV C API to the upcoming version 1.3
369 which supports IF-TNCCS 2.0 long message types, the exclusive flags
370 and multiple IMC/IMV IDs. Both the TNC Client and Server as well as
371 the "Test", "Scanner", and "Attestation" IMC/IMV pairs were updated.
373 - Fully implemented the "TCG Attestation PTS Protocol: Binding to IF-M"
374 standard (TLV-based messages only). TPM-based remote attestation of
375 Linux IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) possible. Measurement
376 reference values are automatically stored in an SQLite database.
378 - The EAP-RADIUS authentication backend supports RADIUS accounting. It sends
379 start/stop messages containing Username, Framed-IP and Input/Output-Octets
380 attributes and has been tested against FreeRADIUS and Microsoft NPS.
382 - Added support for PKCS#8 encoded private keys via the libstrongswan
383 pkcs8 plugin. This is the default format used by some OpenSSL tools since
384 version 1.0.0 (e.g. openssl req with -keyout).
386 - Added session resumption support to the strongSwan TLS stack.
392 - Because of changing checksums before and after installation which caused
393 the integrity tests to fail we avoided directly linking libsimaka, libtls and
394 libtnccs to those libcharon plugins which make use of these dynamic libraries.
395 Instead we linked the libraries to the charon daemon. Unfortunately Ubuntu
396 11.10 activated the --as-needed ld option which discards explicit links
397 to dynamic libraries that are not actually used by the charon daemon itself,
398 thus causing failures during the loading of the plugins which depend on these
399 libraries for resolving external symbols.
401 - Therefore our approach of computing integrity checksums for plugins had to be
402 changed radically by moving the hash generation from the compilation to the
403 post-installation phase.
409 - The new libstrongswan certexpire plugin collects expiration information of
410 all used certificates and exports them to CSV files. It either directly
411 exports them or uses cron style scheduling for batch exports.
413 - starter passes unresolved hostnames to charon, allowing it to do name
414 resolution not before the connection attempt. This is especially useful with
415 connections between hosts using dynamic IP addresses. Thanks to Mirko Parthey
416 for the initial patch.
418 - The android plugin can now be used without the Android frontend patch and
419 provides DNS server registration and logging to logcat.
421 - Pluto and starter (plus stroke and whack) have been ported to Android.
423 - Support for ECDSA private and public key operations has been added to the
424 pkcs11 plugin. The plugin now also provides DH and ECDH via PKCS#11 and can
425 use tokens as random number generators (RNG). By default only private key
426 operations are enabled, more advanced features have to be enabled by their
427 option in strongswan.conf. This also applies to public key operations (even
428 for keys not stored on the token) which were enabled by default before.
430 - The libstrongswan plugin system now supports detailed plugin dependencies.
431 Many plugins have been extended to export its capabilities and requirements.
432 This allows the plugin loader to resolve plugin loading order automatically,
433 and in future releases, to dynamically load the required features on demand.
434 Existing third party plugins are source (but not binary) compatible if they
435 properly initialize the new get_features() plugin function to NULL.
437 - The tnc-ifmap plugin implements a TNC IF-MAP 2.0 client which can deliver
438 metadata about IKE_SAs via a SOAP interface to a MAP server. The tnc-ifmap
439 plugin requires the Apache Axis2/C library.
445 - Our private libraries (e.g. libstrongswan) are not installed directly in
446 prefix/lib anymore. Instead a subdirectory is used (prefix/lib/ipsec/ by
447 default). The plugins directory is also moved from libexec/ipsec/ to that
450 - The dynamic IMC/IMV libraries were moved from the plugins directory to
451 a new imcvs directory in the prefix/lib/ipsec/ subdirectory.
453 - Job priorities were introduced to prevent thread starvation caused by too
454 many threads handling blocking operations (such as CRL fetching). Refer to
455 strongswan.conf(5) for details.
457 - Two new strongswan.conf options allow to fine-tune performance on IKEv2
458 gateways by dropping IKE_SA_INIT requests on high load.
460 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports start PASS and DROP shunt policies
461 preventing traffic to go through IPsec connections. Installation of the
462 shunt policies either via the XFRM netfilter or PFKEYv2 IPsec kernel
465 - The history of policies installed in the kernel is now tracked so that e.g.
466 trap policies are correctly updated when reauthenticated SAs are terminated.
468 - IMC/IMV Scanner pair implementing the RFC 5792 PA-TNC (IF-M) protocol.
469 Using "netstat -l" the IMC scans open listening ports on the TNC client
470 and sends a port list to the IMV which based on a port policy decides if
471 the client is admitted to the network.
472 (--enable-imc-scanner/--enable-imv-scanner).
474 - IMC/IMV Test pair implementing the RFC 5792 PA-TNC (IF-M) protocol.
475 (--enable-imc-test/--enable-imv-test).
477 - The IKEv2 close action does not use the same value as the ipsec.conf dpdaction
478 setting, but the value defined by its own closeaction keyword. The action
479 is triggered if the remote peer closes a CHILD_SA unexpectedly.
485 - The whitelist plugin for the IKEv2 daemon maintains an in-memory identity
486 whitelist. Any connection attempt of peers not whitelisted will get rejected.
487 The 'ipsec whitelist' utility provides a simple command line frontend for
488 whitelist administration.
490 - The duplicheck plugin provides a specialized form of duplicate checking,
491 doing a liveness check on the old SA and optionally notify a third party
492 application about detected duplicates.
494 - The coupling plugin permanently couples two or more devices by limiting
495 authentication to previously used certificates.
497 - In the case that the peer config and child config don't have the same name
498 (usually in SQL database defined connections), ipsec up|route <peer config>
499 starts|routes all associated child configs and ipsec up|route <child config>
500 only starts|routes the specific child config.
502 - fixed the encoding and parsing of X.509 certificate policy statements (CPS).
504 - Duncan Salerno contributed the eap-sim-pcsc plugin implementing a
505 pcsc-lite based SIM card backend.
507 - The eap-peap plugin implements the EAP PEAP protocol. Interoperates
508 successfully with a FreeRADIUS server and Windows 7 Agile VPN clients.
510 - The IKEv2 daemon charon rereads strongswan.conf on SIGHUP and instructs
511 all plugins to reload. Currently only the eap-radius and the attr plugins
512 support configuration reloading.
514 - Added userland support to the IKEv2 daemon for Extended Sequence Numbers
515 support coming with Linux 2.6.39. To enable ESN on a connection, add
516 the 'esn' keyword to the proposal. The default proposal uses 32-bit sequence
517 numbers only ('noesn'), and the same value is used if no ESN mode is
518 specified. To negotiate ESN support with the peer, include both, e.g.
519 esp=aes128-sha1-esn-noesn.
521 - In addition to ESN, Linux 2.6.39 gained support for replay windows larger
522 than 32 packets. The new global strongswan.conf option 'charon.replay_window'
523 configures the size of the replay window, in packets.
529 - Sansar Choinyambuu implemented the RFC 5793 Posture Broker Protocol (BP)
530 compatible with Trusted Network Connect (TNC). The TNCCS 2.0 protocol
531 requires the tnccs_20, tnc_imc and tnc_imv plugins but does not depend
532 on the libtnc library. Any available IMV/IMC pairs conforming to the
533 Trusted Computing Group's TNC-IF-IMV/IMC 1.2 interface specification
534 can be loaded via /etc/tnc_config.
536 - Re-implemented the TNCCS 1.1 protocol by using the tnc_imc and tnc_imv
537 in place of the external libtnc library.
539 - The tnccs_dynamic plugin loaded on a TNC server in addition to the
540 tnccs_11 and tnccs_20 plugins, dynamically detects the IF-TNCCS
541 protocol version used by a TNC client and invokes an instance of
542 the corresponding protocol stack.
544 - IKE and ESP proposals can now be stored in an SQL database using a
545 new proposals table. The start_action field in the child_configs
546 tables allows the automatic starting or routing of connections stored
549 - The new certificate_authorities and certificate_distribution_points
550 tables make it possible to store CRL and OCSP Certificate Distribution
551 points in an SQL database.
553 - The new 'include' statement allows to recursively include other files in
554 strongswan.conf. Existing sections and values are thereby extended and
555 replaced, respectively.
557 - Due to the changes in the parser for strongswan.conf, the configuration
558 syntax for the attr plugin has changed. Previously, it was possible to
559 specify multiple values of a specific attribute type by adding multiple
560 key/value pairs with the same key (e.g. dns) to the plugins.attr section.
561 Because values with the same key now replace previously defined values
562 this is not possible anymore. As an alternative, multiple values can be
563 specified by separating them with a comma (e.g. dns = 1.2.3.4, 2.3.4.5).
565 - ipsec listalgs now appends (set in square brackets) to each crypto
566 algorithm listed the plugin that registered the function.
568 - Traffic Flow Confidentiality padding supported with Linux 2.6.38 can be used
569 by the IKEv2 daemon. The ipsec.conf 'tfc' keyword pads all packets to a given
570 boundary, the special value '%mtu' pads all packets to the path MTU.
572 - The new af-alg plugin can use various crypto primitives of the Linux Crypto
573 API using the AF_ALG interface introduced with 2.6.38. This removes the need
574 for additional userland implementations of symmetric cipher, hash, hmac and
577 - The IKEv2 daemon supports the INITIAL_CONTACT notify as initiator and
578 responder. The notify is sent when initiating configurations with a unique
579 policy, set in ipsec.conf via the global 'uniqueids' option.
581 - The conftest conformance testing framework enables the IKEv2 stack to perform
582 many tests using a distinct tool and configuration frontend. Various hooks
583 can alter reserved bits, flags, add custom notifies and proposals, reorder
584 or drop messages and much more. It is enabled using the --enable-conftest
587 - The new libstrongswan constraints plugin provides advanced X.509 constraint
588 checking. In addition to X.509 pathLen constraints, the plugin checks for
589 nameConstraints and certificatePolicies, including policyMappings and
590 policyConstraints. The x509 certificate plugin and the pki tool have been
591 enhanced to support these extensions. The new left/rightcertpolicy ipsec.conf
592 connection keywords take OIDs a peer certificate must have.
594 - The left/rightauth ipsec.conf keywords accept values with a minimum strength
595 for trustchain public keys in bits, such as rsa-2048 or ecdsa-256.
597 - The revocation and x509 libstrongswan plugins and the pki tool gained basic
598 support for delta CRLs.
604 - IMPORTANT: the default keyexchange mode 'ike' is changing with release 4.5
605 from 'ikev1' to 'ikev2', thus commemorating the five year anniversary of the
606 IKEv2 RFC 4306 and its mature successor RFC 5996. The time has definitively
607 come for IKEv1 to go into retirement and to cede its place to the much more
608 robust, powerful and versatile IKEv2 protocol!
610 - Added new ctr, ccm and gcm plugins providing Counter, Counter with CBC-MAC
611 and Galois/Counter Modes based on existing CBC implementations. These
612 new plugins bring support for AES and Camellia Counter and CCM algorithms
613 and the AES GCM algorithms for use in IKEv2.
615 - The new pkcs11 plugin brings full Smartcard support to the IKEv2 daemon and
616 the pki utility using one or more PKCS#11 libraries. It currently supports
617 RSA private and public key operations and loads X.509 certificates from
620 - Implemented a general purpose TLS stack based on crypto and credential
621 primitives of libstrongswan. libtls supports TLS versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2,
622 ECDHE-ECDSA/RSA, DHE-RSA and RSA key exchange algorithms and RSA/ECDSA based
623 client authentication.
625 - Based on libtls, the eap-tls plugin brings certificate based EAP
626 authentication for client and server. It is compatible to Windows 7 IKEv2
627 Smartcard authentication and the OpenSSL based FreeRADIUS EAP-TLS backend.
629 - Implemented the TNCCS 1.1 Trusted Network Connect protocol using the
630 libtnc library on the strongSwan client and server side via the tnccs_11
631 plugin and optionally connecting to a TNC@FHH-enhanced FreeRADIUS AAA server.
632 Depending on the resulting TNC Recommendation, strongSwan clients are granted
633 access to a network behind a strongSwan gateway (allow), are put into a
634 remediation zone (isolate) or are blocked (none), respectively. Any number
635 of Integrity Measurement Collector/Verifier pairs can be attached
636 via the tnc-imc and tnc-imv charon plugins.
638 - The IKEv1 daemon pluto now uses the same kernel interfaces as the IKEv2
639 daemon charon. As a result of this, pluto now supports xfrm marks which
640 were introduced in charon with 4.4.1.
642 - Applets for Maemo 5 (Nokia) allow to easily configure and control IKEv2
643 based VPN connections with EAP authentication on supported devices.
645 - The RADIUS plugin eap-radius now supports multiple RADIUS servers for
646 redundant setups. Servers are selected by a defined priority, server load and
649 - The simple led plugin controls hardware LEDs through the Linux LED subsystem.
650 It currently shows activity of the IKE daemon and is a good example how to
651 implement a simple event listener.
653 - Improved MOBIKE behavior in several corner cases, for instance, if the
654 initial responder moves to a different address.
656 - Fixed left-/rightnexthop option, which was broken since 4.4.0.
658 - Fixed a bug not releasing a virtual IP address to a pool if the XAUTH
659 identity was different from the IKE identity.
661 - Fixed the alignment of ModeConfig messages on 4-byte boundaries in the
662 case where the attributes are not a multiple of 4 bytes (e.g. Cisco's
665 - Fixed the interoperability of the socket_raw and socket_default
668 - Added man page for strongswan.conf
674 - Support of xfrm marks in IPsec SAs and IPsec policies introduced
675 with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel. For details see the example scenarios
676 ikev2/nat-two-rw-mark, ikev2/rw-nat-mark-in-out and ikev2/net2net-psk-dscp.
678 - The PLUTO_MARK_IN and PLUTO_ESP_ENC environment variables can be used
679 in a user-specific updown script to set marks on inbound ESP or
682 - The openssl plugin now supports X.509 certificate and CRL functions.
684 - OCSP/CRL checking in IKEv2 has been moved to the revocation plugin, enabled
685 by default. Plase update manual load directives in strongswan.conf.
687 - RFC3779 ipAddrBlock constraint checking has been moved to the addrblock
688 plugin, disabled by default. Enable it and update manual load directives
689 in strongswan.conf, if required.
691 - The pki utility supports CRL generation using the --signcrl command.
693 - The ipsec pki --self, --issue and --req commands now support output in
694 PEM format using the --outform pem option.
696 - The major refactoring of the IKEv1 Mode Config functionality now allows
697 the transport and handling of any Mode Config attribute.
699 - The RADIUS proxy plugin eap-radius now supports multiple servers. Configured
700 servers are chosen randomly, with the option to prefer a specific server.
701 Non-responding servers are degraded by the selection process.
703 - The ipsec pool tool manages arbitrary configuration attributes stored
704 in an SQL database. ipsec pool --help gives the details.
706 - The new eap-simaka-sql plugin acts as a backend for EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA,
707 reading triplets/quintuplets from an SQL database.
709 - The High Availability plugin now supports a HA enabled in-memory address
710 pool and Node reintegration without IKE_SA rekeying. The latter allows
711 clients without IKE_SA rekeying support to keep connected during
712 reintegration. Additionally, many other issues have been fixed in the ha
715 - Fixed a potential remote code execution vulnerability resulting from
716 the misuse of snprintf(). The vulnerability is exploitable by
717 unauthenticated users.
723 - The IKEv2 High Availability plugin has been integrated. It provides
724 load sharing and failover capabilities in a cluster of currently two nodes,
725 based on an extend ClusterIP kernel module. More information is available at
726 http://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/HighAvailability.
727 The development of the High Availability functionality was sponsored by
728 secunet Security Networks AG.
730 - Added IKEv1 and IKEv2 configuration support for the AES-GMAC
731 authentication-only ESP cipher. Our aes_gmac kernel patch or a Linux
732 2.6.34 kernel is required to make AES-GMAC available via the XFRM
735 - Added support for Diffie-Hellman groups 22, 23 and 24 to the gmp, gcrypt
736 and openssl plugins, usable by both pluto and charon. The new proposal
737 keywords are modp1024s160, modp2048s224 and modp2048s256. Thanks to Joy Latten
738 from IBM for his contribution.
740 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon supports RAM-based virtual IP pools using
741 the rightsourceip directive with a subnet from which addresses
744 - The ipsec pki --gen and --pub commands now allow the output of
745 private and public keys in PEM format using the --outform pem
748 - The new DHCP plugin queries virtual IP addresses for clients from a DHCP
749 server using broadcasts, or a defined server using the
750 charon.plugins.dhcp.server strongswan.conf option. DNS/WINS server information
751 is additionally served to clients if the DHCP server provides such
752 information. The plugin is used in ipsec.conf configurations having
753 rightsourceip set to %dhcp.
755 - A new plugin called farp fakes ARP responses for virtual IP addresses
756 handed out to clients from the IKEv2 daemon charon. The plugin lets a
757 road-warrior act as a client on the local LAN if it uses a virtual IP
758 from the responders subnet, e.g. acquired using the DHCP plugin.
760 - The existing IKEv2 socket implementations have been migrated to the
761 socket-default and the socket-raw plugins. The new socket-dynamic plugin
762 binds sockets dynamically to ports configured via the left-/rightikeport
763 ipsec.conf connection parameters.
765 - The android charon plugin stores received DNS server information as "net.dns"
766 system properties, as used by the Android platform.
772 - The IKEv2 daemon supports RFC 3779 IP address block constraints
773 carried as a critical X.509v3 extension in the peer certificate.
775 - The ipsec pool --add|del dns|nbns command manages DNS and NBNS name
776 server entries that are sent via the IKEv1 Mode Config or IKEv2
777 Configuration Payload to remote clients.
779 - The Camellia cipher can be used as an IKEv1 encryption algorithm.
781 - The IKEv1 and IKEV2 daemons now check certificate path length constraints.
783 - The new ipsec.conf conn option "inactivity" closes a CHILD_SA if no traffic
784 was sent or received within the given interval. To close the complete IKE_SA
785 if its only CHILD_SA was inactive, set the global strongswan.conf option
786 "charon.inactivity_close_ike" to yes.
788 - More detailed IKEv2 EAP payload information in debug output
790 - IKEv2 EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA share joint libsimaka library
792 - Added required userland changes for proper SHA256 and SHA384/512 in ESP that
793 will be introduced with Linux 2.6.33. The "sha256"/"sha2_256" keyword now
794 configures the kernel with 128 bit truncation, not the non-standard 96
795 bit truncation used by previous releases. To use the old 96 bit truncation
796 scheme, the new "sha256_96" proposal keyword has been introduced.
798 - Fixed IPComp in tunnel mode, stripping out the duplicated outer header. This
799 change makes IPcomp tunnel mode connections incompatible with previous
800 releases; disable compression on such tunnels.
802 - Fixed BEET mode connections on recent kernels by installing SAs with
803 appropriate traffic selectors, based on a patch by Michael Rossberg.
805 - Using extensions (such as BEET mode) and crypto algorithms (such as twofish,
806 serpent, sha256_96) allocated in the private use space now require that we
807 know its meaning, i.e. we are talking to strongSwan. Use the new
808 "charon.send_vendor_id" option in strongswan.conf to let the remote peer know
811 - Experimental support for draft-eronen-ipsec-ikev2-eap-auth, where the
812 responder omits public key authentication in favor of a mutual authentication
813 method. To enable EAP-only authentication, set rightauth=eap on the responder
814 to rely only on the MSK constructed AUTH payload. This not-yet standardized
815 extension requires the strongSwan vendor ID introduced above.
817 - The IKEv1 daemon ignores the Juniper SRX notification type 40001, thus
818 allowing interoperability.
824 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon can now use SQL-based address pools to deal out
825 virtual IP addresses as a Mode Config server. The pool capability has been
826 migrated from charon's sql plugin to a new attr-sql plugin which is loaded
827 by libstrongswan and which can be used by both daemons either with a SQLite
828 or MySQL database and the corresponding plugin.
830 - Plugin names have been streamlined: EAP plugins now have a dash after eap
831 (e.g. eap-sim), as it is used with the --enable-eap-sim ./configure option.
832 Plugin configuration sections in strongswan.conf now use the same name as the
833 plugin itself (i.e. with a dash). Make sure to update "load" directives and
834 the affected plugin sections in existing strongswan.conf files.
836 - The private/public key parsing and encoding has been split up into
837 separate pkcs1, pgp, pem and dnskey plugins. The public key implementation
838 plugins gmp, gcrypt and openssl can all make use of them.
840 - The EAP-AKA plugin can use different backends for USIM/quintuplet
841 calculations, very similar to the EAP-SIM plugin. The existing 3GPP2 software
842 implementation has been migrated to a separate plugin.
844 - The IKEv2 daemon charon gained basic PGP support. It can use locally installed
845 peer certificates and can issue signatures based on RSA private keys.
847 - The new 'ipsec pki' tool provides a set of commands to maintain a public
848 key infrastructure. It currently supports operations to create RSA and ECDSA
849 private/public keys, calculate fingerprints and issue or verify certificates.
851 - Charon uses a monotonic time source for statistics and job queueing, behaving
852 correctly if the system time changes (e.g. when using NTP).
854 - In addition to time based rekeying, charon supports IPsec SA lifetimes based
855 on processed volume or number of packets. They new ipsec.conf paramaters
856 'lifetime' (an alias to 'keylife'), 'lifebytes' and 'lifepackets' handle
857 SA timeouts, while the parameters 'margintime' (an alias to rekeymargin),
858 'marginbytes' and 'marginpackets' trigger the rekeying before a SA expires.
859 The existing parameter 'rekeyfuzz' affects all margins.
861 - If no CA/Gateway certificate is specified in the NetworkManager plugin,
862 charon uses a set of trusted root certificates preinstalled by distributions.
863 The directory containing CA certificates can be specified using the
864 --with-nm-ca-dir=path configure option.
866 - Fixed the encoding of the Email relative distinguished name in left|rightid
869 - Fixed the broken parsing of PKCS#7 wrapped certificates by the pluto daemon.
871 - Fixed smartcard-based authentication in the pluto daemon which was broken by
872 the ECDSA support introduced with the 4.3.2 release.
874 - A patch contributed by Heiko Hund fixes mixed IPv6 in IPv4 and vice versa
875 tunnels established with the IKEv1 pluto daemon.
877 - The pluto daemon now uses the libstrongswan x509 plugin for certificates and
878 CRls and the struct id type was replaced by identification_t used by charon
879 and the libstrongswan library.
885 - IKEv2 charon daemon ported to FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Installation details can
886 be found on wiki.strongswan.org.
888 - ipsec statusall shows the number of bytes transmitted and received over
889 ESP connections configured by the IKEv2 charon daemon.
891 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports include files in ipsec.secrets.
897 - The configuration option --enable-integrity-test plus the strongswan.conf
898 option libstrongswan.integrity_test = yes activate integrity tests
899 of the IKE daemons charon and pluto, libstrongswan and all loaded
900 plugins. Thus dynamic library misconfigurations and non-malicious file
901 manipulations can be reliably detected.
903 - The new default setting libstrongswan.ecp_x_coordinate_only=yes allows
904 IKEv1 interoperability with MS Windows using the ECP DH groups 19 and 20.
906 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the AES-CCM and AES-GCM ESP
907 authenticated encryption algorithms.
909 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports V4 OpenPGP keys.
911 - The RDN parser vulnerability discovered by Orange Labs research team
912 was not completely fixed in version 4.3.2. Some more modifications
913 had to be applied to the asn1_length() function to make it robust.
919 - The new gcrypt plugin provides symmetric cipher, hasher, RNG, Diffie-Hellman
920 and RSA crypto primitives using the LGPL licensed GNU gcrypt library.
922 - libstrongswan features an integrated crypto selftest framework for registered
923 algorithms. The test-vector plugin provides a first set of test vectors and
924 allows pluto and charon to rely on tested crypto algorithms.
926 - pluto can now use all libstrongswan plugins with the exception of x509 and xcbc.
927 Thanks to the openssl plugin, the ECP Diffie-Hellman groups 19, 20, 21, 25, and
928 26 as well as ECDSA-256, ECDSA-384, and ECDSA-521 authentication can be used
931 - Applying their fuzzing tool, the Orange Labs vulnerability research team found
932 another two DoS vulnerabilities, one in the rather old ASN.1 parser of Relative
933 Distinguished Names (RDNs) and a second one in the conversion of ASN.1 UTCTIME
934 and GENERALIZEDTIME strings to a time_t value.
940 - The nm plugin now passes DNS/NBNS server information to NetworkManager,
941 allowing a gateway administrator to set DNS/NBNS configuration on clients
944 - The nm plugin also accepts CA certificates for gateway authentication. If
945 a CA certificate is configured, strongSwan uses the entered gateway address
946 as its idenitity, requiring the gateways certificate to contain the same as
947 subjectAltName. This allows a gateway administrator to deploy the same
948 certificates to Windows 7 and NetworkManager clients.
950 - The command ipsec purgeike deletes IKEv2 SAs that don't have a CHILD SA.
951 The command ipsec down <conn>{n} deletes CHILD SA instance n of connection
952 <conn> whereas ipsec down <conn>{*} deletes all CHILD SA instances.
953 The command ipsec down <conn>[n] deletes IKE SA instance n of connection
954 <conn> plus dependent CHILD SAs whereas ipsec down <conn>[*] deletes all
955 IKE SA instances of connection <conn>.
957 - Fixed a regression introduced in 4.3.0 where EAP authentication calculated
958 the AUTH payload incorrectly. Further, the EAP-MSCHAPv2 MSK key derivation
959 has been updated to be compatible with the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
961 - Refactored installation of triggering policies. Routed policies are handled
962 outside of IKE_SAs to keep them installed in any case. A tunnel gets
963 established only once, even if initiation is delayed due network outages.
965 - Improved the handling of multiple acquire signals triggered by the kernel.
967 - Fixed two DoS vulnerabilities in the charon daemon that were discovered by
968 fuzzing techniques: 1) Sending a malformed IKE_SA_INIT request leaved an
969 incomplete state which caused a null pointer dereference if a subsequent
970 CREATE_CHILD_SA request was sent. 2) Sending an IKE_AUTH request with either
971 a missing TSi or TSr payload caused a null pointer derefence because the
972 checks for TSi and TSr were interchanged. The IKEv2 fuzzer used was
973 developed by the Orange Labs vulnerability research team. The tool was
974 initially written by Gabriel Campana and is now maintained by Laurent Butti.
976 - Added support for AES counter mode in ESP in IKEv2 using the proposal
977 keywords aes128ctr, aes192ctr and aes256ctr.
979 - Further progress in refactoring pluto: Use of the curl and ldap plugins
980 for fetching crls and OCSP. Use of the random plugin to get keying material
981 from /dev/random or /dev/urandom. Use of the openssl plugin as an alternative
982 to the aes, des, sha1, sha2, and md5 plugins. The blowfish, twofish, and
983 serpent encryption plugins are now optional and are not enabled by default.
989 - Support for the IKEv2 Multiple Authentication Exchanges extension (RFC4739).
990 Initiators and responders can use several authentication rounds (e.g. RSA
991 followed by EAP) to authenticate. The new ipsec.conf leftauth/rightauth and
992 leftauth2/rightauth2 parameters define own authentication rounds or setup
993 constraints for the remote peer. See the ipsec.conf man page for more detials.
995 - If glibc printf hooks (register_printf_function) are not available,
996 strongSwan can use the vstr string library to run on non-glibc systems.
998 - The IKEv2 charon daemon can now configure the ESP CAMELLIA-CBC cipher
999 (esp=camellia128|192|256).
1001 - Refactored the pluto and scepclient code to use basic functions (memory
1002 allocation, leak detective, chunk handling, printf_hooks, strongswan.conf
1003 attributes, ASN.1 parser, etc.) from the libstrongswan library.
1005 - Up to two DNS and WINS servers to be sent via IKEv1 ModeConfig can be
1006 configured in the pluto section of strongswan.conf.
1012 - The new server-side EAP RADIUS plugin (--enable-eap-radius)
1013 relays EAP messages to and from a RADIUS server. Successfully
1014 tested with with a freeradius server using EAP-MD5 and EAP-SIM.
1016 - A vulnerability in the Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706) code was found by
1017 Gerd v. Egidy <gerd.von.egidy@intra2net.com> of Intra2net AG affecting
1018 all Openswan and strongSwan releases. A malicious (or expired ISAKMP)
1019 R_U_THERE or R_U_THERE_ACK Dead Peer Detection packet can cause the
1020 pluto IKE daemon to crash and restart. No authentication or encryption
1021 is required to trigger this bug. One spoofed UDP packet can cause the
1022 pluto IKE daemon to restart and be unresponsive for a few seconds while
1023 restarting. This DPD null state vulnerability has been officially
1024 registered as CVE-2009-0790 and is fixed by this release.
1026 - ASN.1 to time_t conversion caused a time wrap-around for
1027 dates after Jan 18 03:14:07 UTC 2038 on 32-bit platforms.
1028 As a workaround such dates are set to the maximum representable
1029 time, i.e. Jan 19 03:14:07 UTC 2038.
1031 - Distinguished Names containing wildcards (*) are not sent in the
1032 IDr payload anymore.
1038 - Fixed a use-after-free bug in the DPD timeout section of the
1039 IKEv1 pluto daemon which sporadically caused a segfault.
1041 - Fixed a crash in the IKEv2 charon daemon occurring with
1042 mixed RAM-based and SQL-based virtual IP address pools.
1044 - Fixed ASN.1 parsing of algorithmIdentifier objects where the
1045 parameters field is optional.
1047 - Ported nm plugin to NetworkManager 7.1.
1053 - Support of the EAP-MSCHAPv2 protocol enabled by the option
1054 --enable-eap-mschapv2. Requires the MD4 hash algorithm enabled
1055 either by --enable-md4 or --enable-openssl.
1057 - Assignment of up to two DNS and up to two WINS servers to peers via
1058 the IKEv2 Configuration Payload (CP). The IPv4 or IPv6 nameserver
1059 addresses are defined in strongswan.conf.
1061 - The strongSwan applet for the Gnome NetworkManager is now built and
1062 distributed as a separate tarball under the name NetworkManager-strongswan.
1068 - Fixed ESP NULL encryption broken by the refactoring of keymat.c.
1069 Also introduced proper initialization and disposal of keying material.
1071 - Fixed the missing listing of connection definitions in ipsec statusall
1072 broken by an unfortunate local variable overload.
1078 - Several performance improvements to handle thousands of tunnels with almost
1079 linear upscaling. All relevant data structures have been replaced by faster
1080 counterparts with better lookup times.
1082 - Better parallelization to run charon on multiple cores. Due to improved
1083 ressource locking and other optimizations the daemon can take full
1084 advantage of 16 or even more cores.
1086 - The load-tester plugin can use a NULL Diffie-Hellman group and simulate
1087 unique identities and certificates by signing peer certificates using a CA
1090 - The redesigned stroke in-memory IP pool handles leases. The "ipsec leases"
1091 command queries assigned leases.
1093 - Added support for smartcards in charon by using the ENGINE API provided by
1094 OpenSSL, based on patches by Michael RoĂŸberg.
1096 - The Padlock plugin supports the hardware RNG found on VIA CPUs to provide a
1097 reliable source of randomness.
1102 - Flexible configuration of logging subsystem allowing to log to multiple
1103 syslog facilities or to files using fine-grained log levels for each target.
1105 - Load testing plugin to do stress testing of the IKEv2 daemon against self
1106 or another host. Found and fixed issues during tests in the multi-threaded
1107 use of the OpenSSL plugin.
1109 - Added profiling code to synchronization primitives to find bottlenecks if
1110 running on multiple cores. Found and fixed an issue where parts of the
1111 Diffie-Hellman calculation acquired an exclusive lock. This greatly improves
1112 parallelization to multiple cores.
1114 - updown script invocation has been separated into a plugin of its own to
1115 further slim down the daemon core.
1117 - Separated IKE_SA/CHILD_SA key derivation process into a closed system,
1118 allowing future implementations to use a secured environment in e.g. kernel
1121 - The kernel interface of charon has been modularized. XFRM NETLINK (default)
1122 and PFKEY (--enable-kernel-pfkey) interface plugins for the native IPsec
1123 stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel as well as a PFKEY interface for the KLIPS
1124 IPsec stack (--enable-kernel-klips) are provided.
1126 - Basic Mobile IPv6 support has been introduced, securing Binding Update
1127 messages as well as tunneled traffic between Mobile Node and Home Agent.
1128 The installpolicy=no option allows peaceful cooperation with a dominant
1129 mip6d daemon and the new type=transport_proxy implements the special MIPv6
1130 IPsec transport proxy mode where the IKEv2 daemon uses the Care-of-Address
1131 but the IPsec SA is set up for the Home Address.
1133 - Implemented migration of Mobile IPv6 connections using the KMADDRESS
1134 field contained in XFRM_MSG_MIGRATE messages sent by the mip6d daemon
1135 via the Linux 2.6.28 (or appropriately patched) kernel.
1141 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports authentication based on raw public keys
1142 stored in the SQL database backend. The ipsec listpubkeys command
1143 lists the available raw public keys via the stroke interface.
1145 - Several MOBIKE improvements: Detect changes in NAT mappings in DPD exchanges,
1146 handle events if kernel detects NAT mapping changes in UDP-encapsulated
1147 ESP packets (requires kernel patch), reuse old addesses in MOBIKE updates as
1148 long as possible and other fixes.
1150 - Fixed a bug in addr_in_subnet() which caused insertion of wrong source
1151 routes for destination subnets having netwmasks not being a multiple of 8 bits.
1152 Thanks go to Wolfgang Steudel, TU Ilmenau for reporting this bug.
1158 - Fixed a Denial-of-Service vulnerability where an IKE_SA_INIT message with
1159 a KE payload containing zeroes only can cause a crash of the IKEv2 charon
1160 daemon due to a NULL pointer returned by the mpz_export() function of the
1161 GNU Multiprecision Library (GMP). Thanks go to Mu Dynamics Research Labs
1162 for making us aware of this problem.
1164 - The new agent plugin provides a private key implementation on top of an
1167 - The NetworkManager plugin has been extended to support certificate client
1168 authentication using RSA keys loaded from a file or using ssh-agent.
1170 - Daemon capability dropping has been ported to libcap and must be enabled
1171 explicitly --with-capabilities=libcap. Future version will support the
1172 newer libcap2 library.
1174 - ipsec listalgs lists the IKEv2 cryptografic algorithms registered with the
1175 charon keying daemon.
1181 - A NetworkManager plugin allows GUI-based configuration of road-warrior
1182 clients in a simple way. It features X509 based gateway authentication
1183 and EAP client authentication, tunnel setup/teardown and storing passwords
1184 in the Gnome Keyring.
1186 - A new EAP-GTC plugin implements draft-sheffer-ikev2-gtc-00.txt and allows
1187 username/password authentication against any PAM service on the gateway.
1188 The new EAP method interacts nicely with the NetworkManager plugin and allows
1189 client authentication against e.g. LDAP.
1191 - Improved support for the EAP-Identity method. The new ipsec.conf eap_identity
1192 parameter defines an additional identity to pass to the server in EAP
1195 - The "ipsec statusall" command now lists CA restrictions, EAP
1196 authentication types and EAP identities.
1198 - Fixed two multithreading deadlocks occurring when starting up
1199 several hundred tunnels concurrently.
1201 - Fixed the --enable-integrity-test configure option which
1202 computes a SHA-1 checksum over the libstrongswan library.
1208 - Consistent logging of IKE and CHILD SAs at the audit (AUD) level.
1210 - Improved the performance of the SQL-based virtual IP address pool
1211 by introducing an additional addresses table. The leases table
1212 storing only history information has become optional and can be
1213 disabled by setting charon.plugins.sql.lease_history = no in
1216 - The XFRM_STATE_AF_UNSPEC flag added to xfrm.h allows IPv4-over-IPv6
1217 and IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnels with the 2.6.26 and later Linux kernels.
1219 - management of different virtual IP pools for different
1220 network interfaces have become possible.
1222 - fixed a bug which prevented the assignment of more than 256
1223 virtual IP addresses from a pool managed by an sql database.
1225 - fixed a bug which did not delete own IPCOMP SAs in the kernel.
1231 - Added statistics functions to ipsec pool --status and ipsec pool --leases
1232 and input validation checks to various ipsec pool commands.
1234 - ipsec statusall now lists all loaded charon plugins and displays
1235 the negotiated IKEv2 cipher suite proposals.
1237 - The openssl plugin supports the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman groups
1238 19, 20, 21, 25, and 26.
1240 - The openssl plugin supports ECDSA authentication using elliptic curve
1243 - Fixed a bug in stroke which caused multiple charon threads to close
1244 the file descriptors during packet transfers over the stroke socket.
1246 - ESP sequence numbers are now migrated in IPsec SA updates handled by
1247 MOBIKE. Works only with Linux kernels >= 2.6.17.
1253 - Fixed the strongswan.conf path configuration problem that occurred when
1254 --sysconfig was not set explicitly in ./configure.
1256 - Fixed a number of minor bugs that where discovered during the 4th
1257 IKEv2 interoperability workshop in San Antonio, TX.
1263 - Plugins for libstrongswan and charon can optionally be loaded according
1264 to a configuration in strongswan.conf. Most components provide a
1265 "load = " option followed by a space separated list of plugins to load.
1266 This allows e.g. the fallback from a hardware crypto accelerator to
1267 to software-based crypto plugins.
1269 - Charons SQL plugin has been extended by a virtual IP address pool.
1270 Configurations with a rightsourceip=%poolname setting query a SQLite or
1271 MySQL database for leases. The "ipsec pool" command helps in administrating
1272 the pool database. See ipsec pool --help for the available options
1274 - The Authenticated Encryption Algorithms AES-CCM-8/12/16 and AES-GCM-8/12/16
1275 for ESP are now supported starting with the Linux 2.6.25 kernel. The
1276 syntax is e.g. esp=aes128ccm12 or esp=aes256gcm16.
1282 - Support for "Hash and URL" encoded certificate payloads has been implemented
1283 in the IKEv2 daemon charon. Using the "certuribase" option of a CA section
1284 allows to assign a base URL to all certificates issued by the specified CA.
1285 The final URL is then built by concatenating that base and the hex encoded
1286 SHA1 hash of the DER encoded certificate. Note that this feature is disabled
1287 by default and must be enabled using the option "charon.hash_and_url".
1289 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports the "uniqueids" option to close multiple
1290 IKE_SAs with the same peer. The option value "keep" prefers existing
1291 connection setups over new ones, where the value "replace" replaces existing
1294 - The crypto factory in libstrongswan additionally supports random number
1295 generators, plugins may provide other sources of randomness. The default
1296 plugin reads raw random data from /dev/(u)random.
1298 - Extended the credential framework by a caching option to allow plugins
1299 persistent caching of fetched credentials. The "cachecrl" option has been
1302 - The new trustchain verification introduced in 4.2.0 has been parallelized.
1303 Threads fetching CRL or OCSP information no longer block other threads.
1305 - A new IKEv2 configuration attribute framework has been introduced allowing
1306 plugins to provide virtual IP addresses, and in the future, other
1307 configuration attribute services (e.g. DNS/WINS servers).
1309 - The stroke plugin has been extended to provide virtual IP addresses from
1310 a pool defined in ipsec.conf. The "rightsourceip" parameter now accepts
1311 address pools in CIDR notation (e.g. 10.1.1.0/24). The parameter also accepts
1312 the value "%poolname", where "poolname" identifies a pool provided by a
1315 - Fixed compilation on uClibc and a couple of other minor bugs.
1317 - Set DPD defaults in ipsec starter to dpd_delay=30s and dpd_timeout=150s.
1319 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the ESP encryption algorithm CAMELLIA
1320 with key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits, as well as the authentication
1321 algorithm AES_XCBC_MAC. Configuration example: esp=camellia192-aesxcbc.
1327 - libstrongswan has been modularized to attach crypto algorithms,
1328 credential implementations (keys, certificates) and fetchers dynamically
1329 through plugins. Existing code has been ported to plugins:
1330 - RSA/Diffie-Hellman implementation using the GNU Multi Precision library
1331 - X509 certificate system supporting CRLs, OCSP and attribute certificates
1332 - Multiple plugins providing crypto algorithms in software
1333 - CURL and OpenLDAP fetcher
1335 - libstrongswan gained a relational database API which uses pluggable database
1336 providers. Plugins for MySQL and SQLite are available.
1338 - The IKEv2 keying daemon charon is more extensible. Generic plugins may provide
1339 connection configuration, credentials and EAP methods or control the daemon.
1340 Existing code has been ported to plugins:
1341 - EAP-AKA, EAP-SIM, EAP-MD5 and EAP-Identity
1342 - stroke configuration, credential and control (compatible to pluto)
1343 - XML bases management protocol to control and query the daemon
1344 The following new plugins are available:
1345 - An experimental SQL configuration, credential and logging plugin on
1346 top of either MySQL or SQLite
1347 - A unit testing plugin to run tests at daemon startup
1349 - The authentication and credential framework in charon has been heavily
1350 refactored to support modular credential providers, proper
1351 CERTREQ/CERT payload exchanges and extensible authorization rules.
1353 - The framework of strongSwan Manager has envolved to the web application
1354 framework libfast (FastCGI Application Server w/ Templates) and is usable
1355 by other applications.
1361 - IKE rekeying in NAT situations did not inherit the NAT conditions
1362 to the rekeyed IKE_SA so that the UDP encapsulation was lost with
1363 the next CHILD_SA rekeying.
1365 - Wrong type definition of the next_payload variable in id_payload.c
1366 caused an INVALID_SYNTAX error on PowerPC platforms.
1368 - Implemented IKEv2 EAP-SIM server and client test modules that use
1369 triplets stored in a file. For details on the configuration see
1370 the scenario 'ikev2/rw-eap-sim-rsa'.
1376 - Fixed error in the ordering of the certinfo_t records in the ocsp cache that
1377 caused multiple entries of the same serial number to be created.
1379 - Implementation of a simple EAP-MD5 module which provides CHAP
1380 authentication. This may be interesting in conjunction with certificate
1381 based server authentication, as weak passwords can't be brute forced
1382 (in contradiction to traditional IKEv2 PSK).
1384 - A complete software based implementation of EAP-AKA, using algorithms
1385 specified in 3GPP2 (S.S0055). This implementation does not use an USIM,
1386 but reads the secrets from ipsec.secrets. Make sure to read eap_aka.h
1389 - Support for vendor specific EAP methods using Expanded EAP types. The
1390 interface to EAP modules has been slightly changed, so make sure to
1391 check the changes if you're already rolling your own modules.
1397 - The default _updown script now dynamically inserts and removes ip6tables
1398 firewall rules if leftfirewall=yes is set in IPv6 connections. New IPv6
1399 net-net and roadwarrior (PSK/RSA) scenarios for both IKEv1 and IKEV2 were
1402 - Implemented RFC4478 repeated authentication to force EAP/Virtual-IP clients
1403 to reestablish an IKE_SA within a given timeframe.
1405 - strongSwan Manager supports configuration listing, initiation and termination
1406 of IKE and CHILD_SAs.
1408 - Fixes and improvements to multithreading code.
1410 - IKEv2 plugins have been renamed to libcharon-* to avoid naming conflicts.
1411 Make sure to remove the old plugins in $libexecdir/ipsec, otherwise they get
1418 - Removed recursive pthread mutexes since uClibc doesn't support them.
1424 - In NAT traversal situations and multiple queued Quick Modes,
1425 those pending connections inserted by auto=start after the
1426 port floating from 500 to 4500 were erronously deleted.
1428 - Added a "forceencaps" connection parameter to enforce UDP encapsulation
1429 to surmount restrictive firewalls. NAT detection payloads are faked to
1430 simulate a NAT situation and trick the other peer into NAT mode (IKEv2 only).
1432 - Preview of strongSwan Manager, a web based configuration and monitoring
1433 application. It uses a new XML control interface to query the IKEv2 daemon
1434 (see http://wiki.strongswan.org/wiki/Manager).
1436 - Experimental SQLite configuration backend which will provide the configuration
1437 interface for strongSwan Manager in future releases.
1439 - Further improvements to MOBIKE support.
1445 - Since some third party IKEv2 implementations run into
1446 problems with strongSwan announcing MOBIKE capability per
1447 default, MOBIKE can be disabled on a per-connection-basis
1448 using the mobike=no option. Whereas mobike=no disables the
1449 sending of the MOBIKE_SUPPORTED notification and the floating
1450 to UDP port 4500 with the IKE_AUTH request even if no NAT
1451 situation has been detected, strongSwan will still support
1452 MOBIKE acting as a responder.
1454 - the default ipsec routing table plus its corresponding priority
1455 used for inserting source routes has been changed from 100 to 220.
1456 It can be configured using the --with-ipsec-routing-table and
1457 --with-ipsec-routing-table-prio options.
1459 - the --enable-integrity-test configure option tests the
1460 integrity of the libstrongswan crypto code during the charon
1463 - the --disable-xauth-vid configure option disables the sending
1464 of the XAUTH vendor ID. This can be used as a workaround when
1465 interoperating with some Windows VPN clients that get into
1466 trouble upon reception of an XAUTH VID without eXtended
1467 AUTHentication having been configured.
1469 - ipsec stroke now supports the rereadsecrets, rereadaacerts,
1470 rereadacerts, and listacerts options.
1476 - If a DNS lookup failure occurs when resolving right=%<FQDN>
1477 or right=<FQDN> combined with rightallowany=yes then the
1478 connection is not updated by ipsec starter thus preventing
1479 the disruption of an active IPsec connection. Only if the DNS
1480 lookup successfully returns with a changed IP address the
1481 corresponding connection definition is updated.
1483 - Routes installed by the keying daemons are now in a separate
1484 routing table with the ID 100 to avoid conflicts with the main
1485 table. Route lookup for IKEv2 traffic is done in userspace to ignore
1486 routes installed for IPsec, as IKE traffic shouldn't get encapsulated.
1492 - The pluto IKEv1 daemon now exhibits the same behaviour as its
1493 IKEv2 companion charon by inserting an explicit route via the
1494 _updown script only if a sourceip exists. This is admissible
1495 since routing through the IPsec tunnel is handled automatically
1496 by NETKEY's IPsec policies. As a consequence the left|rightnexthop
1497 parameter is not required any more.
1499 - The new IKEv1 parameter right|leftallowany parameters helps to handle
1500 the case where both peers possess dynamic IP addresses that are
1501 usually resolved using DynDNS or a similar service. The configuration
1506 can be used by the initiator to start up a connection to a peer
1507 by resolving peer.foo.bar into the currently allocated IP address.
1508 Thanks to the rightallowany flag the connection behaves later on
1513 so that the peer can rekey the connection as an initiator when his
1514 IP address changes. An alternative notation is
1518 which will implicitly set rightallowany=yes.
1520 - ipsec starter now fails more gracefully in the presence of parsing
1521 errors. Flawed ca and conn section are discarded and pluto is started
1522 if non-fatal errors only were encountered. If right=%peer.foo.bar
1523 cannot be resolved by DNS then right=%any will be used so that passive
1524 connections as a responder are still possible.
1526 - The new pkcs11initargs parameter that can be placed in the
1527 setup config section of /etc/ipsec.conf allows the definition
1528 of an argument string that is used with the PKCS#11 C_Initialize()
1529 function. This non-standard feature is required by the NSS softoken
1530 library. This patch was contributed by Robert Varga.
1532 - Fixed a bug in ipsec starter introduced by strongswan-2.8.5
1533 which caused a segmentation fault in the presence of unknown
1534 or misspelt keywords in ipsec.conf. This bug fix was contributed
1537 - Partial support for MOBIKE in IKEv2. The initiator acts on interface/
1538 address configuration changes and updates IKE and IPsec SAs dynamically.
1544 - IKEv2 peer configuration selection now can be based on a given
1545 certification authority using the rightca= statement.
1547 - IKEv2 authentication based on RSA signatures now can handle multiple
1548 certificates issued for a given peer ID. This allows a smooth transition
1549 in the case of a peer certificate renewal.
1551 - IKEv2: Support for requesting a specific virtual IP using leftsourceip on the
1552 client and returning requested virtual IPs using rightsourceip=%config
1553 on the server. If the server does not support configuration payloads, the
1554 client enforces its leftsourceip parameter.
1556 - The ./configure options --with-uid/--with-gid allow pluto and charon
1557 to drop their privileges to a minimum and change to an other UID/GID. This
1558 improves the systems security, as a possible intruder may only get the
1559 CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.
1561 - Further modularization of charon: Pluggable control interface and
1562 configuration backend modules provide extensibility. The control interface
1563 for stroke is included, and further interfaces using DBUS (NetworkManager)
1564 or XML are on the way. A backend for storing configurations in the daemon
1565 is provided and more advanced backends (using e.g. a database) are trivial
1568 - Fixed a compilation failure in libfreeswan occurring with Linux kernel
1575 - Support for an additional Diffie-Hellman exchange when creating/rekeying
1576 a CHILD_SA in IKEv2 (PFS). PFS is enabled when the proposal contains a
1577 DH group (e.g. "esp=aes128-sha1-modp1536"). Further, DH group negotiation
1578 is implemented properly for rekeying.
1580 - Support for the AES-XCBC-96 MAC algorithm for IPsec SAs when using IKEv2
1581 (requires linux >= 2.6.20). It is enabled using e.g. "esp=aes256-aesxcbc".
1583 - Working IPv4-in-IPv6 and IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels for linux >= 2.6.21.
1585 - Added support for EAP modules which do not establish an MSK.
1587 - Removed the dependencies from the /usr/include/linux/ headers by
1588 including xfrm.h, ipsec.h, and pfkeyv2.h in the distribution.
1590 - crlNumber is now listed by ipsec listcrls
1592 - The xauth_modules.verify_secret() function now passes the
1599 - Server side cookie support. If to may IKE_SAs are in CONNECTING state,
1600 cookies are enabled and protect against DoS attacks with faked source
1601 addresses. Number of IKE_SAs in CONNECTING state is also limited per
1602 peer address to avoid resource exhaustion. IKE_SA_INIT messages are
1603 compared to properly detect retransmissions and incoming retransmits are
1604 detected even if the IKE_SA is blocked (e.g. doing OCSP fetches).
1606 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports dynamic http- and ldap-based CRL
1607 fetching enabled by crlcheckinterval > 0 and caching fetched CRLs
1608 enabled by cachecrls=yes.
1610 - Added the configuration options --enable-nat-transport which enables
1611 the potentially insecure NAT traversal for IPsec transport mode and
1612 --disable-vendor-id which disables the sending of the strongSwan
1615 - Fixed a long-standing bug in the pluto IKEv1 daemon which caused
1616 a segmentation fault if a malformed payload was detected in the
1617 IKE MR2 message and pluto tried to send an encrypted notification
1620 - Added the NATT_IETF_02_N Vendor ID in order to support IKEv1 connections
1621 with Windows 2003 Server which uses a wrong VID hash.
1627 - Support of SHA2_384 hash function for protecting IKEv1
1628 negotiations and support of SHA2 signatures in X.509 certificates.
1630 - Fixed a serious bug in the computation of the SHA2-512 HMAC
1631 function. Introduced automatic self-test of all IKEv1 hash
1632 and hmac functions during pluto startup. Failure of a self-test
1633 currently issues a warning only but does not exit pluto [yet].
1635 - Support for SHA2-256/384/512 PRF and HMAC functions in IKEv2.
1637 - Full support of CA information sections. ipsec listcainfos
1638 now shows all collected crlDistributionPoints and OCSP
1641 - Support of the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for IKEv2.
1642 This feature requires the HTTP fetching capabilities of the libcurl
1643 library which must be enabled by setting the --enable-http configure
1646 - Refactored core of the IKEv2 message processing code, allowing better
1647 code reuse and separation.
1649 - Virtual IP support in IKEv2 using INTERNAL_IP4/6_ADDRESS configuration
1650 payload. Additionally, the INTERNAL_IP4/6_DNS attribute is interpreted
1651 by the requestor and installed in a resolv.conf file.
1653 - The IKEv2 daemon charon installs a route for each IPsec policy to use
1654 the correct source address even if an application does not explicitly
1657 - Integrated the EAP framework into charon which loads pluggable EAP library
1658 modules. The ipsec.conf parameter authby=eap initiates EAP authentication
1659 on the client side, while the "eap" parameter on the server side defines
1660 the EAP method to use for client authentication.
1661 A generic client side EAP-Identity module and an EAP-SIM authentication
1662 module using a third party card reader implementation are included.
1664 - Added client side support for cookies.
1666 - Integrated the fixes done at the IKEv2 interoperability bakeoff, including
1667 strict payload order, correct INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD rejection and other minor
1668 fixes to enhance interoperability with other implementations.
1674 - strongSwan now interoperates with the NCP Secure Entry Client,
1675 the Shrew Soft VPN Client, and the Cisco VPN client, doing both
1676 XAUTH and Mode Config.
1678 - UNITY attributes are now recognized and UNITY_BANNER is set
1679 to a default string.
1685 - IKEv1: Support for extended authentication (XAUTH) in combination
1686 with ISAKMP Main Mode RSA or PSK authentication. Both client and
1687 server side were implemented. Handling of user credentials can
1688 be done by a run-time loadable XAUTH module. By default user
1689 credentials are stored in ipsec.secrets.
1691 - IKEv2: Support for reauthentication when rekeying
1693 - IKEv2: Support for transport mode
1695 - fixed a lot of bugs related to byte order
1697 - various other bugfixes
1703 - IKEv1: Implementation of ModeConfig push mode via the new connection
1704 keyword modeconfig=push allows interoperability with Cisco VPN gateways.
1706 - IKEv1: The command ipsec statusall now shows "DPD active" for all
1707 ISAKMP SAs that are under active Dead Peer Detection control.
1709 - IKEv2: Charon's logging and debugging framework has been completely rewritten.
1710 Instead of logger, special printf() functions are used to directly
1711 print objects like hosts (%H) identifications (%D), certificates (%Q),
1712 etc. The number of debugging levels have been reduced to:
1714 0 (audit), 1 (control), 2 (controlmore), 3 (raw), 4 (private)
1716 The debugging levels can either be specified statically in ipsec.conf as
1719 charondebug="lib 1, cfg 3, net 2"
1721 or changed at runtime via stroke as
1723 ipsec stroke loglevel cfg 2
1729 - Implemented full support for IPv6-in-IPv6 tunnels.
1731 - Added configuration options for dead peer detection in IKEv2. dpd_action
1732 types "clear", "hold" and "restart" are supported. The dpd_timeout
1733 value is not used, as the normal retransmission policy applies to
1734 detect dead peers. The dpd_delay parameter enables sending of empty
1735 informational message to detect dead peers in case of inactivity.
1737 - Added support for preshared keys in IKEv2. PSK keys configured in
1738 ipsec.secrets are loaded. The authby parameter specifies the authentication
1739 method to authentificate ourself, the other peer may use PSK or RSA.
1741 - Changed retransmission policy to respect the keyingtries parameter.
1743 - Added private key decryption. PEM keys encrypted with AES-128/192/256
1744 or 3DES are supported.
1746 - Implemented DES/3DES algorithms in libstrongswan. 3DES can be used to
1747 encrypt IKE traffic.
1749 - Implemented SHA-256/384/512 in libstrongswan, allows usage of certificates
1750 signed with such a hash algorithm.
1752 - Added initial support for updown scripts. The actions up-host/client and
1753 down-host/client are executed. The leftfirewall=yes parameter
1754 uses the default updown script to insert dynamic firewall rules, a custom
1755 updown script may be specified with the leftupdown parameter.
1761 - Added support for the auto=route ipsec.conf parameter and the
1762 ipsec route/unroute commands for IKEv2. This allows to set up IKE_SAs and
1763 CHILD_SAs dynamically on demand when traffic is detected by the
1766 - Added support for rekeying IKE_SAs in IKEv2 using the ikelifetime parameter.
1767 As specified in IKEv2, no reauthentication is done (unlike in IKEv1), only
1768 new keys are generated using perfect forward secrecy. An optional flag
1769 which enforces reauthentication will be implemented later.
1771 - "sha" and "sha1" are now treated as synonyms in the ike= and esp=
1772 algorithm configuration statements.
1778 - Full X.509 certificate trust chain verification has been implemented.
1779 End entity certificates can be exchanged via CERT payloads. The current
1780 default is leftsendcert=always, since CERTREQ payloads are not supported
1781 yet. Optional CRLs must be imported locally into /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
1783 - Added support for leftprotoport/rightprotoport parameters in IKEv2. IKEv2
1784 would offer more possibilities for traffic selection, but the Linux kernel
1785 currently does not support it. That's why we stick with these simple
1786 ipsec.conf rules for now.
1788 - Added Dead Peer Detection (DPD) which checks liveliness of remote peer if no
1789 IKE or ESP traffic is received. DPD is currently hardcoded (dpdaction=clear,
1792 - Initial NAT traversal support in IKEv2. Charon includes NAT detection
1793 notify payloads to detect NAT routers between the peers. It switches
1794 to port 4500, uses UDP encapsulated ESP packets, handles peer address
1795 changes gracefully and sends keep alive message periodically.
1797 - Reimplemented IKE_SA state machine for charon, which allows simultaneous
1798 rekeying, more shared code, cleaner design, proper retransmission
1799 and a more extensible code base.
1801 - The mixed PSK/RSA roadwarrior detection capability introduced by the
1802 strongswan-2.7.0 release necessitated the pre-parsing of the IKE proposal
1803 payloads by the responder right before any defined IKE Main Mode state had
1804 been established. Although any form of bad proposal syntax was being correctly
1805 detected by the payload parser, the subsequent error handler didn't check
1806 the state pointer before logging current state information, causing an
1807 immediate crash of the pluto keying daemon due to a NULL pointer.
1813 - Added algorithm selection to charon: New default algorithms for
1814 ike=aes128-sha-modp2048, as both daemons support it. The default
1815 for IPsec SAs is now esp=aes128-sha,3des-md5. charon handles
1816 the ike/esp parameter the same way as pluto. As this syntax does
1817 not allow specification of a pseudo random function, the same
1818 algorithm as for integrity is used (currently sha/md5). Supported
1820 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256
1821 Integrity/PRF: md5, sha (using hmac)
1822 DH-Groups: modp768, 1024, 1536, 2048, 4096, 8192
1824 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256, 3des, blowfish128,
1825 blowfish192, blowfish256
1826 Integrity: md5, sha1
1827 More IKE encryption algorithms will come after porting libcrypto into
1830 - initial support for rekeying CHILD_SAs using IKEv2. Currently no
1831 perfect forward secrecy is used. The rekeying parameters rekey,
1832 rekeymargin, rekeyfuzz and keylife from ipsec.conf are now supported
1833 when using IKEv2. WARNING: charon currently is unable to handle
1834 simultaneous rekeying. To avoid such a situation, use a large
1835 rekeyfuzz, or even better, set rekey=no on one peer.
1837 - support for host2host, net2net, host2net (roadwarrior) tunnels
1838 using predefined RSA certificates (see uml scenarios for
1839 configuration examples).
1841 - new build environment featuring autotools. Features such
1842 as HTTP, LDAP and smartcard support may be enabled using
1843 the ./configure script. Changing install directories
1844 is possible, too. See ./configure --help for more details.
1846 - better integration of charon with ipsec starter, which allows
1847 (almost) transparent operation with both daemons. charon
1848 handles ipsec commands up, down, status, statusall, listall,
1849 listcerts and allows proper load, reload and delete of connections
1856 - initial support of the IKEv2 protocol. Connections in
1857 ipsec.conf designated by keyexchange=ikev2 are negotiated
1858 by the new IKEv2 charon keying daemon whereas those marked
1859 by keyexchange=ikev1 or the default keyexchange=ike are
1860 handled thy the IKEv1 pluto keying daemon. Currently only
1861 a limited subset of functions are available with IKEv2
1862 (Default AES encryption, authentication based on locally
1863 imported X.509 certificates, unencrypted private RSA keys
1864 in PKCS#1 file format, limited functionality of the ipsec
1871 - the dynamic iptables rules from the _updown_x509 template
1872 for KLIPS and the _updown_policy template for NETKEY have
1873 been merged into the default _updown script. The existing
1874 left|rightfirewall keyword causes the automatic insertion
1875 and deletion of ACCEPT rules for tunneled traffic upon
1876 the successful setup and teardown of an IPsec SA, respectively.
1877 left|rightfirwall can be used with KLIPS under any Linux 2.4
1878 kernel or with NETKEY under a Linux kernel version >= 2.6.16
1879 in conjunction with iptables >= 1.3.5. For NETKEY under a Linux
1880 kernel version < 2.6.16 which does not support IPsec policy
1881 matching yet, please continue to use a copy of the _updown_espmark
1882 template loaded via the left|rightupdown keyword.
1884 - a new left|righthostaccess keyword has been introduced which
1885 can be used in conjunction with left|rightfirewall and the
1886 default _updown script. By default leftfirewall=yes inserts
1887 a bi-directional iptables FORWARD rule for a local client network
1888 with a netmask different from 255.255.255.255 (single host).
1889 This does not allow to access the VPN gateway host via its
1890 internal network interface which is part of the client subnet
1891 because an iptables INPUT and OUTPUT rule would be required.
1892 lefthostaccess=yes will cause this additional ACCEPT rules to
1895 - mixed PSK|RSA roadwarriors are now supported. The ISAKMP proposal
1896 payload is preparsed in order to find out whether the roadwarrior
1897 requests PSK or RSA so that a matching connection candidate can
1904 - the new _updown_policy template allows ipsec policy based
1905 iptables firewall rules. Required are iptables version
1906 >= 1.3.5 and linux kernel >= 2.6.16. This script obsoletes
1907 the _updown_espmark template, so that no INPUT mangle rules
1908 are required any more.
1910 - added support of DPD restart mode
1912 - ipsec starter now allows the use of wildcards in include
1913 statements as e.g. in "include /etc/my_ipsec/*.conf".
1914 Patch courtesy of Matthias Haas.
1916 - the Netscape OID 'employeeNumber' is now recognized and can be
1917 used as a Relative Distinguished Name in certificates.
1923 - /etc/init.d/ipsec or /etc/rc.d/ipsec is now a copy of the ipsec
1924 command and not of ipsec setup any more.
1926 - ipsec starter now supports AH authentication in conjunction with
1927 ESP encryption. AH authentication is configured in ipsec.conf
1928 via the auth=ah parameter.
1930 - The command ipsec scencrypt|scdecrypt <args> is now an alias for
1931 ipsec whack --scencrypt|scdecrypt <args>.
1933 - get_sa_info() now determines for the native netkey IPsec stack
1934 the exact time of the last use of an active eroute. This information
1935 is used by the Dead Peer Detection algorithm and is also displayed by
1936 the ipsec status command.
1942 - running under the native Linux 2.6 IPsec stack, the function
1943 get_sa_info() is called by ipsec auto --status to display the current
1944 number of transmitted bytes per IPsec SA.
1946 - get_sa_info() is also used by the Dead Peer Detection process to detect
1947 recent ESP activity. If ESP traffic was received from the peer within
1948 the last dpd_delay interval then no R_Y_THERE notification must be sent.
1950 - strongSwan now supports the Relative Distinguished Name "unstructuredName"
1951 in ID_DER_ASN1_DN identities. The following notations are possible:
1953 rightid="unstructuredName=John Doe"
1954 rightid="UN=John Doe"
1956 - fixed a long-standing bug which caused PSK-based roadwarrior connections
1957 to segfault in the function id.c:same_id() called by keys.c:get_secret()
1958 if an FQDN, USER_FQDN, or Key ID was defined, as in the following example.
1965 - the ipsec command now supports most ipsec auto commands (e.g. ipsec listall).
1967 - ipsec starter didn't set host_addr and client.addr ports in whack msg.
1969 - in order to guarantee backwards-compatibility with the script-based
1970 auto function (e.g. auto --replace), the ipsec starter scripts stores
1971 the defaultroute information in the temporary file /var/run/ipsec.info.
1973 - The compile-time option USE_XAUTH_VID enables the sending of the XAUTH
1974 Vendor ID which is expected by Cisco PIX 7 boxes that act as IKE Mode Config
1977 - the ipsec starter now also recognizes the parameters authby=never and
1978 type=passthrough|pass|drop|reject.
1984 - ipsec starter now supports the also parameter which allows
1985 a modular structure of the connection definitions. Thus
1986 "ipsec start" is now ready to replace "ipsec setup".
1992 - Mathieu Lafon's popular ipsec starter tool has been added to the
1993 strongSwan distribution. Many thanks go to Stephan Scholz from astaro
1994 for his integration work. ipsec starter is a C program which is going
1995 to replace the various shell and awk starter scripts (setup, _plutoload,
1996 _plutostart, _realsetup, _startklips, _confread, and auto). Since
1997 ipsec.conf is now parsed only once, the starting of multiple tunnels is
1998 accelerated tremedously.
2000 - Added support of %defaultroute to the ipsec starter. If the IP address
2001 changes, a HUP signal to the ipsec starter will automatically
2002 reload pluto's connections.
2004 - moved most compile time configurations from pluto/Makefile to
2005 Makefile.inc by defining the options USE_LIBCURL, USE_LDAP,
2006 USE_SMARTCARD, and USE_NAT_TRAVERSAL_TRANSPORT_MODE.
2008 - removed the ipsec verify and ipsec newhostkey commands
2010 - fixed some 64-bit issues in formatted print statements
2012 - The scepclient functionality implementing the Simple Certificate
2013 Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) is nearly complete but hasn't been
2020 - CA certicates are now automatically loaded from a smartcard
2021 or USB crypto token and appear in the ipsec auto --listcacerts
2028 - when using "ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>" with a PKCS#11
2029 library that does not support the C_Encrypt() Cryptoki
2030 function (e.g. OpenSC), the RSA encryption is done in
2031 software using the public key fetched from the smartcard.
2033 - The scepclient function now allows to define the
2034 validity of a self-signed certificate using the --days,
2035 --startdate, and --enddate options. The default validity
2036 has been changed from one year to five years.
2042 - the config setup parameter pkcs11proxy=yes opens pluto's PKCS#11
2043 interface to other applications for RSA encryption and decryption
2044 via the whack interface. Notation:
2046 ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>
2047 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2048 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2051 ipsec whack --scdecrypt <data>
2052 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2053 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
2056 The default setting for inbase and outbase is hex.
2058 The new proxy interface can be used for securing symmetric
2059 encryption keys required by the cryptoloop or dm-crypt
2060 disk encryption schemes, especially in the case when
2061 pkcs11keepstate=yes causes pluto to lock the pkcs11 slot
2064 - if the file /etc/ipsec.secrets is lacking during the startup of
2065 pluto then the root-readable file /etc/ipsec.d/private/myKey.der
2066 containing a 2048 bit RSA private key and a matching self-signed
2067 certificate stored in the file /etc/ipsec.d/certs/selfCert.der
2068 is automatically generated by calling the function
2070 ipsec scepclient --out pkcs1 --out cert-self
2072 scepclient was written by Jan Hutter and Martin Willi, students
2073 at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, Switzerland.
2079 - the current extension of the PKCS#7 framework introduced
2080 a parsing error in PKCS#7 wrapped X.509 certificates that are
2081 e.g. transmitted by Windows XP when multi-level CAs are used.
2082 the parsing syntax has been fixed.
2084 - added a patch by Gerald Richter which tolerates multiple occurrences
2085 of the ipsec0 interface when using KLIPS.
2091 - with gawk-3.1.4 the word "default2 has become a protected
2092 keyword for use in switch statements and cannot be used any
2093 more in the strongSwan scripts. This problem has been
2094 solved by renaming "default" to "defaults" and "setdefault"
2095 in the scripts _confread and auto, respectively.
2097 - introduced the parameter leftsendcert with the values
2099 always|yes (the default, always send a cert)
2100 ifasked (send the cert only upon a cert request)
2101 never|no (never send a cert, used for raw RSA keys and
2104 - fixed the initialization of the ESP key length to a default of
2105 128 bits in the case that the peer does not send a key length
2106 attribute for AES encryption.
2108 - applied Herbert Xu's uniqueIDs patch
2110 - applied Herbert Xu's CLOEXEC patches
2116 - CRLs can now be cached also in the case when the issuer's
2117 certificate does not contain a subjectKeyIdentifier field.
2118 In that case the subjectKeyIdentifier is computed by pluto as the
2119 160 bit SHA-1 hash of the issuer's public key in compliance
2120 with section 4.2.1.2 of RFC 3280.
2122 - Fixed a bug introduced by strongswan-2.5.1 which eliminated
2123 not only multiple Quick Modes of a given connection but also
2124 multiple connections between two security gateways.
2130 - Under the native IPsec of the Linux 2.6 kernel, a %trap eroute
2131 installed either by setting auto=route in ipsec.conf or by
2132 a connection put into hold, generates an XFRM_AQUIRE event
2133 for each packet that wants to use the not-yet exisiting
2134 tunnel. Up to now each XFRM_AQUIRE event led to an entry in
2135 the Quick Mode queue, causing multiple IPsec SA to be
2136 established in rapid succession. Starting with strongswan-2.5.1
2137 only a single IPsec SA is established per host-pair connection.
2139 - Right after loading the PKCS#11 module, all smartcard slots are
2140 searched for certificates. The result can be viewed using
2143 ipsec auto --listcards
2145 The certificate objects found in the slots are numbered
2146 starting with #1, #2, etc. This position number can be used to address
2147 certificates (leftcert=%smartcard) and keys (: PIN %smartcard)
2148 in ipsec.conf and ipsec.secrets, respectively:
2150 %smartcard (selects object #1)
2151 %smartcard#1 (selects object #1)
2152 %smartcard#3 (selects object #3)
2154 As an alternative the existing retrieval scheme can be used:
2156 %smartcard:45 (selects object with id=45)
2157 %smartcard0 (selects first object in slot 0)
2158 %smartcard4:45 (selects object in slot 4 with id=45)
2160 - Depending on the settings of CKA_SIGN and CKA_DECRYPT
2161 private key flags either C_Sign() or C_Decrypt() is used
2162 to generate a signature.
2164 - The output buffer length parameter siglen in C_Sign()
2165 is now initialized to the actual size of the output
2166 buffer prior to the function call. This fixes the
2167 CKR_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL error that could occur when using
2168 the OpenSC PKCS#11 module.
2170 - Changed the initialization of the PKCS#11 CK_MECHANISM in
2171 C_SignInit() to mech = { CKM_RSA_PKCS, NULL_PTR, 0 }.
2173 - Refactored the RSA public/private key code and transferred it
2174 from keys.c to the new pkcs1.c file as a preparatory step
2175 towards the release of the SCEP client.
2181 - The loading of a PKCS#11 smartcard library module during
2182 runtime does not require OpenSC library functions any more
2183 because the corresponding code has been integrated into
2184 smartcard.c. Also the RSAREF pkcs11 header files have been
2185 included in a newly created pluto/rsaref directory so that
2186 no external include path has to be defined any longer.
2188 - A long-awaited feature has been implemented at last:
2189 The local caching of CRLs fetched via HTTP or LDAP, activated
2190 by the parameter cachecrls=yes in the config setup section
2191 of ipsec.conf. The dynamically fetched CRLs are stored under
2192 a unique file name containing the issuer's subjectKeyID
2193 in /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
2195 - Applied a one-line patch courtesy of Michael Richardson
2196 from the Openswan project which fixes the kernel-oops
2197 in KLIPS when an snmp daemon is running on the same box.
2203 - Eliminated null length CRL distribution point strings.
2205 - Fixed a trust path evaluation bug introduced with 2.4.3
2211 - Improved the joint OCSP / CRL revocation policy.
2212 OCSP responses have precedence over CRL entries.
2214 - Introduced support of CRLv2 reason codes.
2216 - Fixed a bug with key-pad equipped readers which caused
2217 pluto to prompt for the pin via the console when the first
2218 occasion to enter the pin via the key-pad was missed.
2220 - When pluto is built with LDAP_V3 enabled, the library
2221 liblber required by newer versions of openldap is now
2228 - Added the _updown_espmark template which requires all
2229 incoming ESP traffic to be marked with a default mark
2232 - Introduced the pkcs11keepstate parameter in the config setup
2233 section of ipsec.conf. With pkcs11keepstate=yes the PKCS#11
2234 session and login states are kept as long as possible during
2235 the lifetime of pluto. This means that a PIN entry via a key
2236 pad has to be done only once.
2238 - Introduced the pkcs11module parameter in the config setup
2239 section of ipsec.conf which specifies the PKCS#11 module
2240 to be used with smart cards. Example:
2242 pkcs11module=/usr/lib/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.lo
2244 - Added support of smartcard readers equipped with a PIN pad.
2246 - Added patch by Jay Pfeifer which detects when netkey
2247 modules have been statically built into the Linux 2.6 kernel.
2249 - Added two patches by Herbert Xu. The first uses ip xfrm
2250 instead of setkey to flush the IPsec policy database. The
2251 second sets the optional flag in inbound IPComp SAs only.
2253 - Applied Ulrich Weber's patch which fixes an interoperability
2254 problem between native IPsec and KLIPS systems caused by
2255 setting the replay window to 32 instead of 0 for ipcomp.
2261 - Fixed a bug which caused an unwanted Mode Config request
2262 to be initiated in the case where "right" was used to denote
2263 the local side in ipsec.conf and "left" the remote side,
2264 contrary to the recommendation that "right" be remote and
2271 - updated Vendor ID to strongSwan-2.4.0
2273 - updated copyright statement to include David Buechi and
2280 - strongSwan now communicates with attached smartcards and
2281 USB crypto tokens via the standardized PKCS #11 interface.
2282 By default the OpenSC library from www.opensc.org is used
2283 but any other PKCS#11 library could be dynamically linked.
2284 strongSwan's PKCS#11 API was implemented by David Buechi
2285 and Michael Meier, both graduates of the Zurich University
2286 of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland.
2288 - When a %trap eroute is triggered by an outgoing IP packet
2289 then the native IPsec stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel [often/
2290 always?] returns an XFRM_ACQUIRE message with an undefined
2291 protocol family field and the connection setup fails.
2292 As a workaround IPv4 (AF_INET) is now assumed.
2294 - the results of the UML test scenarios are now enhanced
2295 with block diagrams of the virtual network topology used
2296 in a particular test.
2302 - fixed IV used to decrypt informational messages.
2303 This bug was introduced with Mode Config functionality.
2305 - fixed NCP Vendor ID.
2307 - undid one of Ulrich Weber's maximum udp size patches
2308 because it caused a segmentation fault with NAT-ed
2311 - added UML scenarios wildcards and attr-cert which
2312 demonstrate the implementation of IPsec policies based
2313 on wildcard parameters contained in Distinguished Names and
2314 on X.509 attribute certificates, respectively.
2320 - Added basic Mode Config functionality
2322 - Added Mathieu Lafon's patch which upgrades the status of
2323 the NAT-Traversal implementation to RFC 3947.
2325 - The _startklips script now also loads the xfrm4_tunnel
2328 - Added Ulrich Weber's netlink replay window size and
2329 maximum udp size patches.
2331 - UML testing now uses the Linux 2.6.10 UML kernel by default.
2337 - Eric Marchionni and Patrik Rayo, both recent graduates from
2338 the Zuercher Hochschule Winterthur in Switzerland, created a
2339 User-Mode-Linux test setup for strongSwan. For more details
2340 please read the INSTALL and README documents in the testing
2343 - Full support of group attributes based on X.509 attribute
2344 certificates. Attribute certificates can be generated
2345 using the openac facility. For more details see
2349 The group attributes can be used in connection definitions
2350 in order to give IPsec access to specific user groups.
2351 This is done with the new parameter left|rightgroups as in
2353 rightgroups="Research, Sales"
2355 giving access to users possessing the group attributes
2356 Research or Sales, only.
2358 - In Quick Mode clients with subnet mask /32 are now
2359 coded as IP_V4_ADDRESS or IP_V6_ADDRESS. This should
2360 fix rekeying problems with the SafeNet/SoftRemote and NCP
2361 Secure Entry Clients.
2363 - Changed the defaults of the ikelifetime and keylife parameters
2364 to 3h and 1h, respectively. The maximum allowable values are
2365 now both set to 24 h.
2367 - Suppressed notification wars between two IPsec peers that
2368 could e.g. be triggered by incorrect ISAKMP encryption.
2370 - Public RSA keys can now have identical IDs if either the
2371 issuing CA or the serial number is different. The serial
2372 number of a certificate is now shown by the command
2374 ipsec auto --listpubkeys
2380 - Added Tuomo Soini's sourceip feature which allows a strongSwan
2381 roadwarrior to use a fixed Virtual IP (see README section 2.6)
2382 and reduces the well-known four tunnel case on VPN gateways to
2383 a single tunnel definition (see README section 2.4).
2385 - Fixed a bug occurring with NAT-Traversal enabled when the responder
2386 suddenly turns initiator and the initiator cannot find a matching
2387 connection because of the floated IKE port 4500.
2389 - Removed misleading ipsec verify command from barf.
2391 - Running under the native IP stack, ipsec --version now shows
2392 the Linux kernel version (courtesy to the Openswan project).
2398 - Introduced the ipsec auto --listalgs monitoring command which lists
2399 all currently registered IKE and ESP algorithms.
2401 - Fixed a bug in the ESP algorithm selection occurring when the strict flag
2402 is set and the first proposed transform does not match.
2404 - Fixed another deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex,
2405 occurring when a smartcard is present.
2407 - Prevented that a superseded Phase1 state can trigger a DPD_TIMEOUT event.
2409 - Fixed the printing of the notification names (null)
2411 - Applied another of Herbert Xu's Netlink patches.
2417 - Support of Dead Peer Detection. The connection parameter
2419 dpdaction=clear|hold
2421 activates DPD for the given connection.
2423 - The default Opportunistic Encryption (OE) policy groups are not
2424 automatically included anymore. Those wishing to activate OE can include
2425 the policy group with the following statement in ipsec.conf:
2427 include /etc/ipsec.d/examples/oe.conf
2429 The default for [right|left]rsasigkey is now set to %cert.
2431 - strongSwan now has a Vendor ID of its own which can be activated
2432 using the compile option VENDORID
2434 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch which sets the compression algorithm correctly.
2436 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch fixing an ESPINUDP problem
2438 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch setting source/destination port numbers.
2440 - Reapplied one of Herbert Xu's NAT-Traversal patches which got
2441 lost during the migration from SuperFreeS/WAN.
2443 - Fixed a deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex.
2445 - Fixed the unsharing of alg parameters when instantiating group
2452 - Thomas Walpuski made me aware of a potential DoS attack via
2453 a PKCS#7-wrapped certificate bundle which could overwrite valid CA
2454 certificates in Pluto's authority certificate store. This vulnerability
2455 was fixed by establishing trust in CA candidate certificates up to a
2456 trusted root CA prior to insertion into Pluto's chained list.
2458 - replaced the --assign option by the -v option in the auto awk script
2459 in order to make it run with mawk under debian/woody.
2465 - Split of the status information between ipsec auto --status (concise)
2466 and ipsec auto --statusall (verbose). Both commands can be used with
2467 an optional connection selector:
2469 ipsec auto --status[all] <connection_name>
2471 - Added the description of X.509 related features to the ipsec_auto(8)
2474 - Hardened the ASN.1 parser in debug mode, especially the printing
2475 of malformed distinguished names.
2477 - The size of an RSA public key received in a certificate is now restricted to
2479 512 bits <= modulus length <= 8192 bits.
2481 - Fixed the debug mode enumeration.
2487 - Fixed another PKCS#7 vulnerability which could lead to an
2488 endless loop while following the X.509 trust chain.
2494 - Fixed the PKCS#7 vulnerability discovered by Thomas Walpuski
2495 that accepted end certificates having identical issuer and subject
2496 distinguished names in a multi-tier X.509 trust chain.
2502 - Removed all remaining references to ipsec_netlink.h in KLIPS.
2508 - The new "ca" section allows to define the following parameters:
2511 cacert=koolCA.pem # cacert of kool CA
2512 ocspuri=http://ocsp.kool.net:8001 # ocsp server
2513 ldapserver=ldap.kool.net # default ldap server
2514 crluri=http://www.kool.net/kool.crl # crl distribution point
2515 crluri2="ldap:///O=Kool, C= .." # crl distribution point #2
2516 auto=add # add, ignore
2518 The ca definitions can be monitored via the command
2520 ipsec auto --listcainfos
2522 - Fixed cosmetic corruption of /proc filesystem by integrating
2523 D. Hugh Redelmeier's freeswan-2.06 kernel fixes.
2529 - Added support for the 818043 NAT-Traversal update of Microsoft's
2530 Windows 2000/XP IPsec client which sends an ID_FQDN during Quick Mode.
2532 - A symbolic link to libcrypto is now added in the kernel sources
2533 during kernel compilation
2535 - Fixed a couple of 64 bit issues (mostly casts to int).
2536 Thanks to Ken Bantoft who checked my sources on a 64 bit platform.
2538 - Replaced s[n]printf() statements in the kernel by ipsec_snprintf().
2539 Credits go to D. Hugh Redelmeier, Michael Richardson, and Sam Sgro
2540 of the FreeS/WAN team who solved this problem with the 2.4.25 kernel.
2546 - an empty ASN.1 SEQUENCE OF or SET OF object (e.g. a subjectAltName
2547 certificate extension which contains no generalName item) can cause
2548 a pluto crash. This bug has been fixed. Additionally the ASN.1 parser has
2549 been hardened to make it more robust against malformed ASN.1 objects.
2551 - applied Herbert Xu's NAT-T patches which fixes NAT-T under the native
2552 Linux 2.6 IPsec stack.
2558 - based on freeswan-2.04, x509-1.5.3, nat-0.6c, alg-0.8.1rc12