4 - Support for the IKEv2 OCSP extensions (RFC 4806) has been added, which allows
5 peers to request and send OCSP responses directly in IKEv2.
7 - Validation of X.509 name constraints in the constraints plugin has been
8 refactored to align with RFC 5280.
10 - The dhcp plugin has been ported to FreeBSD/macOS.
12 - The openssl plugin is now compatible with AWS-LC.
14 - Overflows of unique identifiers (e.g. Netlink sequence numbers or reqids) are
15 now handled gracefully.
17 - Updated the pkcs11.h header based on the latest OpenSC version in order to
18 include new algorithm and struct definitions for the pkcs11 plugin.
19 Added support for PSS padding in smartcard-based RSA signatures using either
20 on-chip or external data hashing.
22 - Added keyid and certid handles in the pki --ocsp command so that keys and/or
23 certificates can be stored on a smartcard or in a TPM 2.0 device.
25 - Fail SA installation on Linux if replay protection is disabled while ESN is
26 enabled, which the kernel currently doesn't support.
32 - Fixes a regression with handling OCSP error responses and adds a new
33 option to specify the length of nonces in OCSP requests. Also adds some
34 other improvements for OCSP handling and fuzzers for OCSP
41 - Fixed a vulnerability in charon-tkm related to processing DH public values
42 that can lead to a buffer overflow and potentially remote code execution.
43 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2023-41913.
45 - The new `pki --ocsp` command produces OCSP responses based on certificate
46 status information provided by plugins.
48 Two sources are currently available, the openxpki plugin that directly
49 accesses the OpenXPKI database and the `--index` argument, which reads
50 certificate status information from OpenSSL-style index.txt files.
52 - The cert-enroll script handles the initial enrollment of an X.509 host
53 certificate with a PKI server via the EST or SCEP protocols.
55 Run as a systemd timer or via a crontab entry the script daily checks the
56 expiration date of the host certificate. When a given deadline is reached,
57 the host certificate is automatically renewed via EST or SCEP re-enrollment
58 based on the possession of the old private key and the matching certificate.
60 - The --priv argument for charon-cmd allows using any type of private key.
62 - Support for nameConstraints of type iPAddress has been added (the openssl
63 plugin previously didn't support nameConstraints at all).
65 - SANs of type uniformResourceIdentifier can now be encoded in certificates.
67 - Password-less PKCS#12 and PKCS#8 files are supported.
69 - A new global option allows preventing peers from authenticating with trusted
70 end-entity certificates (i.e. local certificates).
72 - ECDSA public keys that encode curve parameters explicitly are now rejected by
73 all plugins that support ECDSA.
75 - charon-nm now actually uses the XFRM interfaces added with 5.9.10, it can
76 also use the name in connection.interface-name.
78 - The resolve plugin tries to maintain the order of installed DNS servers.
80 - The kernel-libipsec plugin always installs routes even if no address is found
81 in the local traffic selectors.
83 - Increased the default receive buffer size for Netlink sockets to 8 MiB and
84 simplified its configuration.
86 - Copy the issuer's subjectKeyIdentifier as authorityKeyIdentifier instead of
87 always generating a hash of the subjectPublicKey.
89 - Fixed issues while reestablishing multiple CHILD_SAs (e.g. after a DPD
90 timeout) that could cause a reqid to get assigned to multiple CHILD_SAs with
91 unrelated traffic selectors.
93 - Fixed a possible infinite loop issue in watcher_t and removed WATCHER_EXCEPT,
94 instead callbacks are always invoked even if only errors are signaled.
96 - Fixed a regression in the IKE_SA_INIT tracking code added with 5.9.6 when
97 handling invalid messages.
99 - Fixed adding the XFRMA_REPLAY_ESN_VAL attribute twice when updating SAs.
101 - Correctly encode SPI from REKEY_SA notify in CHILD_SA_NOT_FOUND notify if
102 CHILD_SA is not found during rekeying.
104 - The testing environment is now based on Debian 12 (bookworm), by default.
110 - A deadlock in the vici plugin has been fixed that could get triggered when
111 multiple connections were initiated/terminated concurrently and control-log
112 events were raised by the watcher_t component.
114 - CRLs have to be signed by a certificate that has the cRLSign keyUsage bit
115 encoded (even if it's a CA), or a CA certificate without keyUsage extension.
117 - Optional CA labels in EST server URIs are supported by `pki --est/estca`.
119 - CMS-style signatures in PKCS#7 containers are supported by the pkcs7 and
120 openssl plugins, which allows verifying RSA-PSS and ECDSA signatures.
122 - Fixed a regression in the server implementation of EAP-TLS with TLS 1.2 or
123 earlier that was introduced with 5.9.10.
125 - Ensure the TLS handshake is complete in the EAP-TLS client with TLS <= 1.2.
127 - kernel-libipsec can process raw ESP packets on Linux (disabled by default) and
128 gained support for trap policies.
130 - The dhcp plugin uses an alternate method to determine the source address
131 for unicast DHCP requests that's not affected by interface filtering.
133 - Certificate and trust chain selection as initiator has been improved in case
134 the local trust chain is incomplete and an unrelated certreq is received.
136 - ECDSA and EdDSA keys in IPSECKEY RRs are supported by the ipseckey plugin.
138 - To bypass tunnel mode SAs/policies, the kernel-wfp plugin installs bypass
139 policies also on the FWPM_SUBLAYER_IPSEC_TUNNEL sublayer.
141 - Stale OCSP responses are now replace in-place in the certificate cache.
143 - Fixed parsing of SCEP server capabilities by `pki --scep/scepca`.
149 - Fixed a vulnerability related to certificate verification in TLS-based EAP
150 methods that leads to an authentication bypass followed by an expired pointer
151 dereference that results in a denial of service and possibly even remote code
153 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2023-26463.
155 - Added support for full packet hardware offload for IPsec SAs and policies with
156 Linux 6.2 kernels to the kernel-netlink plugin.
158 - TLS-based EAP methods now use the standardized key derivation when used
161 - The eap-tls plugin properly supports TLS 1.3 according to RFC 9190, by
162 implementing the "protected success indication".
164 - With the `prefer` value for the `childless` setting, initiators will create
165 a childless IKE_SA if the responder supports the extension.
167 - Routes via XFRM interfaces can optionally be installed automatically by
168 enabling the `install_routes_xfrmi` option of the kernel-netlink plugin.
170 - charon-nm now uses XFRM interfaces instead of dummy TUN devices to avoid
171 issues with name resolution if they are supported by the kernel.
173 - The `pki --req` command can encode extendedKeyUsage (EKU) flags in the
174 PKCS#10 certificate signing request.
176 - The `pki --issue` command adopts EKU flags from CSRs but allows modifying them
177 (replace them completely, or adding/removing specific flags).
179 - On Linux 6.2 kernels, the last use times of CHILD_SAs are determined via the
180 IPsec SAs instead of the policies.
182 - For libcurl with MultiSSL support, the curl plugin provides an option to
183 select the SSL/TLS backend.
189 - The charon.reqid_base setting allows specifying the first reqid that's
190 automatically assigned to a CHILD_SA.
192 - The path/command for resolvconf(8) used by the resolve plugin is now
195 - The resolve plugin doesn't generate unique interface names for name servers
196 anymore. Instead, all available name servers are associated with a single,
197 configurable interface name.
199 - Serial numbers of certificates and CRLs are now always returned in canonical
200 form (i.e. without leading zeros).
202 - The kernel-netlink plugin now logs extended ACK error/warning messages.
208 - Fixed a vulnerability related to accessing untrusted OCSP URIs and CDPs in
209 certificates that could lead to a denial-of-service attack.
210 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2022-40617.
212 - The pki --scep|--scepca commands support the HTTP-based "Simple Certificate
213 Enrollment Protocol" (RFC 8894 SCEP) replacing the old and long deprecated
214 scepclient that has been removed.
216 - The pki --est|estca commands support the HTTPS-based "Enrollment over Secure
217 Transport" (RFC 7030 EST) protocol.
219 - The pki --req command can create a certificate request based on an existing
220 PKCS#10 template by replacing the public key and re-generating the signature
221 with the new private key.
223 - For IKEv2, the ike_updown() "up" event and the state change to IKE_ESTABLISHED
224 are now triggered after all IKE-related tasks are done.
226 - The ike_cfg_t object is now always replaced together with the peer_cfg_t
227 object that's set on an IKE_SA during authentication.
229 - The gcm plugin has been enabled by default, so that the TLS 1.3 unit tests
230 can be completed successfully with just the default plugins.
232 - The socket plugins don't set the SO_REUSEADDR option anymore on the IKE UDP
233 sockets, so an error is triggered if e.g. two daemons (e.g. charon and
234 charon-systemd) are running concurrently using the same ports.
236 - The charon.rsa_pss_trailerfield setting generates an algorithmIdentifier with
237 explicit trailerField.
243 - The IKEv2 key derivation is now delayed until the keys are actually needed for
244 the next message. Instead of deriving the keys while processing an IKE_SA_INIT
245 request, it's delayed until the corresponding IKE_AUTH request is received.
246 DH implementations now must do costly public key validation and the key
247 derivation in get_shared_secret().
249 - Inbound IKEv2 messages are not parsed immediately anymore, instead we first
250 check a request's MID and compare its hash to that of the previous request to
251 decide if it's a valid retransmit (for fragmented message we only keep track
252 of the first fragment, so we don't have to wait for all fragments and
253 reconstruct the message, which we did before).
255 - The retransmission logic in the dhcp plugin has been fixed so that four
256 retransmits are sent per DHCP request over a total of 15 seconds (previously,
257 it could happen that all were sent within the same second without any time
258 to actually wait for a response).
260 - The connmark plugin now considers configured masks in installed firewall
261 rules, which allows using the upper parts of the mark value for other
262 purposes. Just consider that the daemon might have to be restarted regularly
263 to reset the global unique mark counter as that's unaware of any masks.
265 - Child config selection has been improved as responder in cases where multiple
266 children use transport mode traffic selectors.
268 - The outbound SA/policy is now also removed after IKEv1 CHILD_SA rekeyings.
270 - The openssl plugin supports AES and Camellia in CTR mode.
276 - The IKEv2 key derivation, in particular prf+, has been modularized to simplify
277 certification (e.g. FIPS-140) via an already certified third-party library.
278 The botan, openssl and wolfssl plugins implement the key derivation for
279 HMAC-based PRFs via their respective HKDF implementation. A generic
280 implementation is provided by the new kdf plugin.
282 - Labeled IPsec with IKEv2 is supported in an SELinux and a proprietary simple
283 mode. In SELinux mode, traffic that matches a trap policy with generic
284 context (e.g. system_u:object_r:ipsec_spd_t:s0) triggers the negotiation of
285 CHILD_SAs with a specific label. With the simple mode, labels are not set on
286 SAs/policies but can be used as identifier to select specific child configs.
288 - DoS protection has been improved: COOKIE secrets are now switched based on a
289 time limit (2 min.), a new per-IP threshold (default 3) is used to trigger
290 them, and unprocessed IKE_SA_INITs are already counted as half-open IKE_SAs.
292 - Initiating duplicate CHILD_SAs within the same IKE_SA is largely prevented.
294 - Immediately initiating a CHILD_SA with trap policies is now possible via
295 `start_action=trap|start`.
297 - If the source address is unknown when initiating an IKEv2 SA, a NAT situation
298 is now forced for IPv4 (for IPv6, NAT-T is disabled) to avoid causing
299 asymmetric enabling of UDP-encapsulation.
301 - Installing unnecessary exclude routes for VPN servers on FreeBSD is avoided.
303 - The new `map_level` option for syslog loggers allows mapping log levels
304 to syslog levels starting at the specified number.
306 - The addrblock plugin allows limiting the validation depth of issuer addrblock
309 - The default AEAD ESP proposal (sent since 5.9.0) now includes `noesn` to make
310 it standards-compliant.
312 - Individual CHILD_SAs can be queried via the `list-sas` vici command (or
313 `swanctl --list-sas ), either by unique ID or name.
315 - Compatibility with OpenSSL 3.0 has been improved.
321 - Fixed a vulnerability in the EAP client implementation that was caused by
322 incorrectly handling early EAP-Success messages. It may allow to bypass the
323 client and in some scenarios even the server authentication, or could lead to
324 a denial-of-service attack.
325 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2021-45079.
327 - Using the trusted RSA or ECC Endorsement Key of the TPM 2.0, libtpmtss may now
328 establish a secure session via RSA encryption or an ephemeral ECDH key
329 exchange, respectively. The session allows HMAC-based authenticated
330 communication with the TPM 2.0 and the exchanged parameters can be encrypted
331 where necessary to guarantee confidentiality (e.g. when using the TPM as RNG).
333 - Basic support for OpenSSL 3.0 has been added, in particular, the new
334 load_legacy option (enabled by default) allows loading the "legacy" provider
335 for algorithms like MD4 and DES (both required for EAP-MSCHAPv2), and the
336 existing fips_mode option allows explicitly loading the "fips" provider e.g.
337 if it's not activated in OpenSSL's fipsmodule.cnf.
339 - The MTU of TUN devices created by the kernel-pfroute plugin on macOS and
340 FreeBSD is now configurable and reduced to 1400 bytes, by default. This also
341 fixes an issue on macOS 12 that prevented the detection of virtual IPs
342 installed on such TUN devices.
344 - When rekeying CHILD_SAs, the old outbound SA is now uninstalled shortly after
345 the new SA has been installed on the initiator/winner. This is useful for
346 IPsec implementations where the ordering of SAs is unpredictable and we can't
347 set the SPI on the outbound policy to switch to the new SA while both are
350 - The sw-collector utility may now iterate through APT history logs processed
353 - The openssl plugin now only announces the ECDH groups actually supported by
354 OpenSSL (determined via EC_get_builtin_curves()).
360 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability in the gmp plugin that was caused by
361 an integer overflow when processing RSASSA-PSS signatures with very large
363 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2021-41990.
365 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability in the in-memory certificate cache
366 if certificates are replaced and a very large random value caused an integer
368 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2021-41991.
370 - Fixed a related flaw that caused the daemon to accept an infinite number of
371 versions of a valid certificate by modifying the parameters in the
372 signatureAlgorithm field of the outer X.509 Certificate structure.
374 - AUTH_LIFETIME notifies are now only sent by a responder if it can't
375 reauthenticate the IKE_SA itself due to asymmetric authentication (i.e. EAP)
376 or the use of virtual IPs.
378 - Serial number generation in several pki sub-commands has been fixed so they
379 don't start with an unintended zero byte.
381 - Initialize libtpmtss in all programs and library that use it.
383 - Migrated testing scripts to Python 3.
389 - Added AES_ECB, SHA-3 and SHAKE-256 support to wolfssl plugin.
391 - Added AES_CCM and SHA-3 signature support to openssl plugin.
393 - The x509 and openssl plugins now consider the authorityKeyIdentifier, if
394 available, before verifying signatures, which avoids unnecessary signature
395 verifications after a CA key rollover if both certificates are loaded.
397 - The pkcs11 plugin better handles optional attributes like CKA_TRUSTED, which
398 previously depended on a version check.
400 - charon-nm now supports using SANs as client identities, not only full DNs.
402 - charon-tkm now handles IKE encryption.
404 - A MOBIKE update is sent again if a a change in the NAT mappings is detected
405 but the endpoints stay the same.
407 - Converted most of the test case scenarios to the vici interface
413 - Together with a Linux 5.8 kernel supporting the IMA measurement of the GRUB
414 bootloader and the Linux kernel, the strongSwan Attestation IMC allows to do
415 remote attestation of the complete boot phase. A recent TPM 2.0 device with a
416 SHA-256 PCR bank is required, so that both BIOS and IMA file measurements are
417 based on SHA-256 hashes.
419 - Our own TLS library (libtls) that we use for TLS-based EAP methods and PT-TLS
420 gained experimental support for TLS 1.3. Thanks to Méline Sieber (client) and
421 Pascal Knecht (client and server) for their work on this.
422 Because the use of TLS 1.3 with these EAP methods is not yet standardized (two
423 Internet-Drafts are being worked on), the default maximum version is currently
424 set to TLS 1.2, which is now also the default minimum version. However the TNC
425 test scenarios using PT-TLS transport already use TLS 1.3.
427 - Other improvements for libtls also affect older TLS versions. For instance, we
428 added support for ECDH with Curve25519/448 (DH groups may also be configured
429 now), for EdDSA keys and certificates and for RSA-PSS signatures. Support for
430 old and weak cipher suites has been removed (e.g. with 3DES and MD5) as well
431 as signature schemes with SHA-1.
433 - The listener_t::ike_update event is now also called for MOBIKE updates. Its
434 signature has changed so we only have to call it once if both addresses/ports
435 have changed (e.g. for an address family switch). The event is now also
438 - The farp plugin has been ported to macOS and FreeBSD. Thanks to Dan James for
441 - To fix DNS server installation with systemd-resolved, charon-nm now creates a
442 dummy TUN device again (was removed with 5.5.1).
444 - The botan plugin can use rng_t implementations provided by other plugins when
445 generating keys etc. if the Botan library supports it.
447 - charon-tkm now supports multiple CAs and is configured via vici/swanctl.
449 - Simple glob patterns (e.g. include conf.d/*.conf) now also work on Windows.
450 Handling of forward slashes in paths on Windows has also been improved.
452 - The abbreviations for the 'surname' and 'serial number' RDNs in ASN.1 DNs have
453 been changed to align with RFC 4519: The abbreviation for 'surname' is now
454 "SN" (was "S" before), which was previously used for 'serial number' that can
455 now be specified as "serialNumber" only.
457 - An issue with Windows clients requesting previous IPv6 but not IPv4 virtual
458 IP addresses has been fixed.
460 - ike_sa_manager_t: Checking out IKE_SAs by config is now atomic (e.g. when
461 acquires for different children of the same connection arrive concurrently).
462 The checkout_new() method has been renamed to create_new(). A new
463 checkout_new() method allows registering a new IKE_SA with the manager before
464 checking it in, so jobs can be queued without losing them as they can block
465 on checking out the new SA.
471 - Remote attestation via TNC supports the SHA-256 based TPM 2.0 BIOS/EFI
472 measurements introduced with the Linux 5.4 kernel.
474 - Nonces in OCSP responses are not enforced anymore and only validated if a
475 nonce is actually contained.
477 - Fixed an issue when only some fragments of a retransmitted IKEv2 message were
478 received, which prevented processing a following fragmented message.
480 - All queued vici messages are now sent to subscribed clients during shutdown,
481 which includes ike/child-updown events triggered when all SAs are deleted.
483 - CHILD_SA IP addresses are updated before installation to allow MOBIKE updates
484 while retransmitting a CREATE_CHILD_SA request.
486 - When looking for a route to the peer, the kernel-netlink plugin ignores the
487 current source address if it's deprecated.
489 - The file and syslog loggers support logging the log level of each message
490 after the subsystem (e.g. [IKE2]).
492 - charon-nm is now properly terminated during system shutdown.
494 - Improved support for EdDSA keys in vici/swanctl, in particular, encrypted
495 keys are now supported.
497 - A new global strongswan.conf option allows sending the Cisco FlexVPN vendor ID
498 to prevent Cisco devices from narrowing a 0.0.0.0/0 traffic selector.
500 - The openssl plugin accepts CRLs issued by non-CA certificates if they contain
501 the cRLSign keyUsage flag (the x509 plugin already does this since 4.5.1).
503 - Attributes in PKCS#7 containers, as used in SCEP, are now properly
504 DER-encoded, i.e. sorted.
506 - The load-tester plugin now supports virtual IPv6 addresses and IPv6 source
513 - We prefer AEAD algorithms for ESP and therefore put AES-GCM in a default AEAD
514 proposal in front of the previous default proposal.
516 - The NM backend now clears cached credentials when disconnecting, has DPD and
517 and close action set to restart, and supports custom remote TS via 'remote-ts'
518 option (no GUI support).
520 - The pkcs11 plugin falls back to software hashing for PKCS#1v1.5 RSA signatures
521 if mechanisms with hashing (e.g. CKM_SHA256_RSA_PKCS) are not supported.
523 - The owner/group of log files is now set so the daemon can reopen them if the
524 config is reloaded and it doesn't run as root.
526 - The wolfssl plugin (with wolfSSL 4.4.0+) supports x448 DH and Ed448 keys.
528 - The vici plugin stores all CA certificates in one location, which avoids
529 issues with unloading authority sections or clearing all credentials.
531 - When unloading a vici connection with start_action=start, any related IKE_SAs
532 without children are now terminated (including those in CONNECTING state).
534 - The hashtable implementation has been changed so it maintains insertion order.
535 This was mainly done so the vici plugin can store its connections in a
536 hashtable, which makes managing high numbers of connections faster.
538 - The default maximum size for vici messages (512 KiB) can now be changed via
539 VICI_MESSAGE_SIZE_MAX compile option.
541 - The charon.check_current_path option allows forcing a DPD exchange to check if
542 the current path still works whenever interface/address-changes are detected.
544 - It's possible to use clocks other than CLOCK_MONOTONIC (e.g. CLOCK_BOOTTIME)
545 via TIME_CLOCK_ID compile option if clock_gettime() is available and
546 pthread_condattr_setclock() supports that clock.
548 - Test cases and functions can now be filtered when running the unit tests.
554 - In IKEv1 Quick Mode make sure that a proposal exists before determining
555 lifetimes (fixes crash due to null pointer exception).
557 - OpenSSL currently doesn't support squeezing bytes out of a SHAKE128/256
558 XOF (eXtended Output Function) multiple times. Unfortunately,
559 EVP_DigestFinalXOF() completely resets the context and later calls not
560 simply fail, they cause a null-pointer dereference in libcrypto. This
561 fixes the crash at the cost of repeating initializing the whole state
562 and allocating too much data for subsequent calls.
568 - Updates for the NM backend (and plugin), among others: EAP-TLS authentication,
569 configurable local and remote IKE identities, custom server port, redirection
570 and reauthentication support.
572 - Previously used reqids are now reallocated to workaround an issue on FreeBSD
573 where the daemon can't use reqids > 16383.
575 - On Linux, throw type routes are installed for passthrough policies. They act
576 as fallbacks on routes in other tables and require less information, so they
577 can be installed earlier and are not affected by updates.
579 - For IKEv1, the lifetimes of the selected transform are returned to the
580 initiator, which is an issue with peers that propose different lifetimes in
581 different transforms. We also return the correct transform and proposal IDs.
583 - IKE_SAs are not re-established anymore if a deletion has been queued.
585 - Added support for Ed448 keys and certificates via openssl plugin and pki tool.
586 The openssl plugin also supports SHA-3 and SHAKE128/256.
588 - The use of algorithm IDs from the private use ranges can now be enabled
589 globally, to use them even if no strongSwan vendor ID was exchanged.
595 - Identity-based CA constraints are supported via vici/swanctl.conf. They
596 enforce that the remote's certificate chain contains a CA certificate with a
597 specific identity. While similar to the existing CA constraints, they don't
598 require that the CA certificate is locally installed such as intermediate CA
599 certificates received from peers. Compared to wildcard identity matching (e.g.
600 "..., OU=Research, CN=*") this requires less trust in the intermediate CAs (to
601 only issue certificates with legitimate subject DNs) as long as path length
602 basic constraints prevent them from issuing further intermediate CAs.
604 - Intermediate CA certificates may now be sent in hash-and-URL encoding by
605 configuring a base URL for the parent CA.
607 - Implemented NIST SP-800-90A Deterministic Random Bit Generator (DRBG)
608 based on AES-CTR and SHA2-HMAC modes. Currently used by gmp and ntru plugins.
610 - Random nonces sent in an OCSP requests are now expected in the corresponding
613 - The kernel-netlink plugin ignores deprecated IPv6 addresses for MOBIKE.
614 Whether temporary or permanent IPv6 addresses are included depends on the
615 charon.prefer_temporary_addrs setting.
617 - Extended Sequence Numbers (ESN) are configured via PF_KEY if supported by the
620 - Unique section names are used for CHILD_SAs in vici child-updown events and
621 more information (e.g. statistics) are included for individually deleted
622 CHILD_SAs (in particular for IKEv1).
624 - So fallbacks to other plugins work properly, creating HMACs via openssl plugin
625 now fails instantly if the underlying hash algorithm isn't supported (e.g.
628 - Exponents of RSA keys read from TPM 2.0 via SAPI are now correctly converted.
630 - Routing table IDs > 255 are supported for custom routes on Linux.
632 - The D-Bus config file for charon-nm is now installed in
633 $(datadir)/dbus-1/system.d instead of $(sysconfdir)/dbus-1/system.d.
635 - INVALID_MAJOR_VERSION notifies are now correctly sent in messages of the same
636 exchange type and using the same message ID as the request.
638 - IKEv2 SAs are immediately destroyed when sending or receiving INVALID_SYNTAX
639 notifies in authenticated messages.
645 - RDNs in Distinguished Names can now optionally be matched less strict. The
646 global option charon.rdn_matching takes two alternative values that cause the
647 matching algorithm to either ignore the order of matched RDNs or additionally
648 accept DNs that contain more RDNs than configured (unmatched RDNs are treated
649 like wildcard matches).
651 - The updown plugin now passes the same interface to the script that is also
652 used for the automatically installed routes, i.e. the interface over which the
653 peer is reached instead of the interface on which the local address is found.
655 - TPM 2.0 contexts are now protected by a mutex to prevent issues if multiple
656 IKE_SAs use the same private key concurrently.
662 - The systemd service units have been renamed. The modern unit, which was called
663 strongswan-swanctl, is now called strongswan (the previous name is configured
664 as alias). The legacy unit is now called strongswan-starter.
666 - Support for XFRM interfaces (available since Linux 4.19) has been added.
667 Configuration is possible via swanctl.conf. Interfaces may be created
668 dynamically via updown/vici scripts, or statically before or after
669 establishing the SAs. Routes must be added manually as needed (the daemon will
670 not install any routes for outbound policies with an interface ID).
672 - Initiation of childless IKE_SAs is supported (RFC 6023). If enabled and
673 supported by the responder, no CHILD_SA is established during IKE_AUTH. This
674 allows using a separate DH exchange even for the first CHILD_SA, which is
675 otherwise created with keys derived from the IKE_SA's key material.
677 - The NetworkManager backend and plugin support IPv6.
679 - The new wolfssl plugin is a wrapper around the wolfSSL crypto library. Thanks
680 to Sean Parkinson of wolfSSL Inc. for the initial patch.
682 - IKE SPIs may optionally be labeled via the charon.spi_mask|label options. This
683 feature was extracted from charon-tkm, however, now applies the mask/label in
686 - The openssl plugin supports ChaCha20-Poly1305 when built with OpenSSL 1.1.0.
688 - The PB-TNC finite state machine according to section 3.2 of RFC 5793 was not
689 correctly implemented when sending either a CRETRY or SRETRY batch. These
690 batches can only be sent in the "Decided" state and a CRETRY batch can
691 immediately carry all messages usually transported by a CDATA batch. It is
692 currently not possible to send a SRETRY batch since full-duplex mode for
693 PT-TLS transport is not supported.
695 - Instead of marking virtual IPv6 addresses as deprecated, the kernel-netlink
696 plugin uses address labels to avoid their use for non-VPN traffic.
698 - The agent plugin creates sockets to the ssh/gpg-agent dynamically and does not
699 keep them open, which otherwise can prevent the agent from getting terminated.
701 - To avoid broadcast loops the forecast plugin now only reinjects packets that
702 are marked or received from the configured interface.
704 - UTF-8 encoded passwords are supported via EAP-MSCHAPv2, which internally uses
705 an UTF-16LE encoding to calculate the NT hash.
707 - Adds the build-certs script to generate the keys and certificates used for
708 regression tests dynamically. They are built with the pki version installed
709 in the KVM root image so it's not necessary to have an up-to-date version with
710 all required plugins installed on the host system.
716 - Private key implementations may optionally provide a list of supported
717 signature schemes, which is used by the tpm plugin because for each key on a
718 TPM 2.0 the hash algorithm and for RSA also the padding scheme is predefined.
720 - For RSA with PSS padding, the TPM 2.0 specification mandates the maximum salt
721 length (as defined by the length of the key and hash). However, if the TPM is
722 FIPS-168-4 compliant, the salt length equals the hash length. This is assumed
723 for FIPS-140-2 compliant TPMs, but if that's not the case, it might be
724 necessary to manually enable charon.plugins.tpm.fips_186_4 if the TPM doesn't
725 use the maximum salt length.
727 - swanctl now accesses directories for credentials relative to swanctl.conf, in
728 particular, when it's loaded from a custom location via --file argument. The
729 base directory that's used if --file is not given is configurable at runtime
730 via SWANCTL_DIR environment variable.
732 - With RADIUS Accounting enabled, the eap-radius plugin adds the session ID to
733 Access-Request messages, simplifying associating database entries for IP
734 leases and accounting with sessions.
736 - IPs assigned by RADIUS servers are included in Accounting-Stop even if clients
737 don't claim them, allowing releasing them early on connection errors.
739 - Selectors installed on transport mode SAs by the kernel-netlink plugin are
740 updated on IP address changes (e.g. via MOBIKE).
742 - Added support for RSA signatures with SHA-256 and SHA-512 to the agent plugin.
743 For older versions of ssh/gpg-agent that only support SHA-1, IKEv2 signature
744 authentication has to be disabled via charon.signature_authentication.
746 - The sshkey and agent plugins support Ed25519/Ed448 SSH keys and signatures.
748 - The openssl plugin supports X25519/X448 Diffie-Hellman and Ed25519/Ed448 keys
749 and signatures when built against OpenSSL 1.1.1.
751 - Ed25519, ChaCha20/Poly1305, SHA-3 and AES-CCM were added to the botan plugin.
753 - The mysql plugin now properly handles database connections with transactions
756 - IP addresses in HA pools are now distributed evenly among all segments.
758 - On newer FreeBSD kernels, the kernel-pfkey plugin reads the reqid directly
759 from SADB_ACQUIRE messages, i.e. not requiring previous policy installation by
760 the plugin, e.g. for compatibility with if_ipsec(4) VTIs.
766 - Fixes a vulnerability in the gmp plugin triggered by crafted certificates with
767 RSA keys with very small moduli. When verifying signatures with such keys,
768 the code patched with the fix for CVE-2018-16151/2 caused an integer underflow
769 and subsequent heap buffer overflow that results in a crash of the daemon.
770 The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2018-17540.
776 - Fixes a potential authorization bypass vulnerability in the gmp plugin that
777 was caused by a too lenient verification of PKCS#1 v1.5 signatures. Several
778 flaws could be exploited by a Bleichenbacher-style attack to forge signatures
779 for low-exponent keys (i.e. with e=3). CVE-2018-16151 has been assigned to
780 the problem of accepting random bytes after the OID of the hash function in
781 such signatures, and CVE-2018-16152 has been assigned to the issue of not
782 verifying that the parameters in the ASN.1 algorithmIdentifier structure is
783 empty. Other flaws that don't lead to a vulnerability directly (e.g. not
784 checking for at least 8 bytes of padding) have no separate CVE assigned.
786 - Dots are not allowed anymore in section names in swanctl.conf and
787 strongswan.conf. This mainly affects the configuration of file loggers. If the
788 path for such a log file contains dots it now has to be configured in the new
789 `path` setting within the arbitrarily renamed subsection in the `filelog`
792 - Sections in swanctl.conf and strongswan.conf may now reference other sections.
793 All settings and subsections from such a section are inherited. This allows
794 to simplify configs as redundant information has only to be specified once
795 and may then be included in other sections (refer to the example in the man
796 page for strongswan.conf).
798 - The originally selected IKE config (based on the IPs and IKE version) can now
799 change if no matching algorithm proposal is found. This way the order
800 of the configs doesn't matter that much anymore and it's easily possible to
801 specify separate configs for clients that require weak algorithms (instead
802 of having to also add them in other configs that might be selected).
804 - Support for Postquantum Preshared Keys for IKEv2 (draft-ietf-ipsecme-qr-ikev2)
807 - The new botan plugin is a wrapper around the Botan C++ crypto library. It
808 requires a fairly recent build from Botan's master branch (or the upcoming
809 2.8.0 release). Thanks to René Korthaus and his team from Rohde & Schwarz
810 Cybersecurity for the initial patch.
812 - The pki tool accepts a xmppAddr otherName as a subjectAlternativeName using
813 the syntax --san xmppaddr:<jid>.
815 - Implementation of RFC 8412 "Software Inventory Message and Attributes (SWIMA)
816 for PA-TNC". SWIMA subscription option sets CLOSE_WRITE trigger on apt
817 history.log file resulting in a ClientRetry PB-TNC batch to initialize
818 a new measurement cycle.
820 - Added support for fuzzing the PA-TNC (RFC 5792) and PB-TNC (RFC 5793) NEA
821 protocols on Google's OSS-Fuzz infrastructure.
823 - Support for version 2 of Intel's TPM2-TSS TGC Software Stack. The presence of
824 the in-kernel /dev/tpmrm0 resource manager is automatically detected.
826 - Marks the in- and/or outbound SA should apply to packets after processing may
827 be configured in swanctl.conf on Linux. For outbound SAs this requires at
828 least a 4.14 kernel. Setting a mask and configuring a mark/mask for inbound
829 SAs will be added with the upcoming 4.19 kernel.
831 - New options in swanctl.conf allow configuring how/whether DF, ECN and DS
832 fields in the IP headers are copied during IPsec processing. Controlling this
833 is currently only possible on Linux.
835 - To avoid conflicts, the dhcp plugin now only uses the DHCP server port if
836 explicitly configured.
842 - Fixed a DoS vulnerability in the IKEv2 key derivation if the openssl plugin is
843 used in FIPS mode and HMAC-MD5 is negotiated as PRF.
844 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2018-10811.
846 - Fixed a vulnerability in the stroke plugin, which did not check the received
847 length before reading a message from the socket. Unless a group is configured,
848 root privileges are required to access that socket, so in the default
849 configuration this shouldn't be an issue.
850 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2018-5388.
852 ⁻ CRLs that are not yet valid are now ignored to avoid problems in scenarios
853 where expired certificates are removed from CRLs and the clock on the host
854 doing the revocation check is trailing behind that of the host issuing CRLs.
856 - The issuer of fetched CRLs is now compared to the issuer of the checked
859 - CRL validation results other than revocation (e.g. a skipped check because
860 the CRL couldn't be fetched) are now stored also for intermediate CA
861 certificates and not only for end-entity certificates, so a strict CRL policy
862 can be enforced in such cases.
864 - In compliance with RFC 4945, section 5.1.3.2, certificates used for IKE must
865 now either not contain a keyUsage extension (like the ones generated by pki)
866 or have at least one of the digitalSignature or nonRepudiation bits set.
868 - New options for vici/swanctl allow forcing the local termination of an IKE_SA.
869 This might be useful in situations where it's known the other end is not
870 reachable anymore, or that it already removed the IKE_SA, so retransmitting a
871 DELETE and waiting for a response would be pointless. Waiting only a certain
872 amount of time for a response before destroying the IKE_SA is also possible
873 by additionally specifying a timeout.
875 - When removing routes, the kernel-netlink plugin now checks if it tracks other
876 routes for the same destination and replaces the installed route instead of
877 just removing it. Same during installation, where existing routes previously
878 weren't replaced. This should allow using traps with virtual IPs on Linux.
880 - The dhcp plugin only sends the client identifier option if identity_lease is
881 enabled. It can also send identities of up to 255 bytes length, instead of
882 the previous 64 bytes. If a server address is configured, DHCP requests are
883 now sent from port 67 instead of 68 to avoid ICMP port unreachables.
885 - Roam events are now completely ignored for IKEv1 SAs.
887 - ChaCha20/Poly1305 is now correctly proposed without key length. For
888 compatibility with older releases the chacha20poly1305compat keyword may be
889 included in proposals to also propose the algorithm with a key length.
891 - Configuration of hardware offload of IPsec SAs is now more flexible and allows
892 a new mode, which automatically uses it if the kernel and device support it.
894 - SHA-2 based PRFs are supported in PKCS#8 files as generated by OpenSSL 1.1.
896 - The pki --verify tool may load CA certificates and CRLs from directories.
898 - Fixed an issue with DNS servers passed to NetworkManager in charon-nm.
904 - Fixed a DoS vulnerability in the parser for PKCS#1 RSASSA-PSS signatures that
905 was caused by insufficient input validation. One of the configurable
906 parameters in algorithm identifier structures for RSASSA-PSS signatures is the
907 mask generation function (MGF). Only MGF1 is currently specified for this
908 purpose. However, this in turn takes itself a parameter that specifies the
909 underlying hash function. strongSwan's parser did not correctly handle the
910 case of this parameter being absent, causing an undefined data read.
911 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2018-6459.
913 - The previously negotiated DH group is reused when rekeying an SA, instead of
914 using the first group in the configured proposals, which avoids an additional
915 exchange if the peer selected a different group via INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD when
916 the SA was created initially.
917 The selected DH group is also moved to the front of all sent proposals that
918 contain it and all proposals that don't are moved to the back in order to
919 convey the preference for this group to the peer.
921 - Handling of MOBIKE task queuing has been improved. In particular, the response
922 to an address update is not ignored anymore if only an address list update or
925 - The fallback drop policies installed to avoid traffic leaks when replacing
926 addresses in installed policies are now replaced by temporary drop policies,
927 which also prevent acquires because we currently delete and reinstall IPsec
928 SAs to update their addresses.
930 - Access X.509 certificates held in non-volatile storage of a TPM 2.0
931 referenced via the NV index.
933 - Adding the --keyid parameter to pki --print allows to print private keys
934 or certificates stored in a smartcard or a TPM 2.0.
936 - Fixed proposal selection if a peer incorrectly sends DH groups in the ESP
937 proposals during IKE_AUTH and also if a DH group is configured in the local
938 ESP proposal and charon.prefer_configured_proposals is disabled.
940 - MSKs received via RADIUS are now padded to 64 bytes to avoid compatibility
941 issues with EAP-MSCHAPv2 and PRFs that have a block size < 64 bytes (e.g.
944 - The tpm_extendpcr command line tool extends a digest into a TPM PCR.
946 - Ported the NetworkManager backend from the deprecated libnm-glib to libnm.
948 - The save-keys debugging/development plugin saves IKE and/or ESP keys to files
949 compatible with Wireshark.
955 - In compliance with RFCs 8221 and 8247 several algorithms were removed from the
956 default ESP/AH and IKEv2 proposals, respectively (3DES, Blowfish and MD5 from
957 ESP/AH, MD5 and MODP-1024 from IKEv2). These algorithms may still be used in
960 - Added support for RSASSA-PSS signatures. For backwards compatibility they are
961 not used automatically by default, enable charon.rsa_pss to change that. To
962 explicitly use or require such signatures with IKEv2 signature authentication
963 (RFC 7427), regardless of whether that option is enabled, use ike:rsa/pss...
964 authentication constraints.
966 - The pki tool can optionally sign certificates/CRLs with RSASSA-PSS via the
967 `--rsa-padding pss` option.
969 - The sec-updater tool checks for security updates in dpkg-based repositories
970 (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu) and sets the security flags in the IMV policy database
971 accordingly. Additionally for each new package version a SWID tag for the
972 given OS and HW architecture is created and stored in the database.
973 Using the sec-updater.sh script template the lookup can be automated
974 (e.g. via an hourly cron job).
976 - The introduction of file versions in the IMV database scheme broke file
977 reference hash measurements. This has been fixed by creating generic product
978 versions having an empty package name.
980 - A new timeout option for the systime-fix plugin stops periodic system time
981 checks after a while and enforces a certificate verification, closing or
982 reauthenticating all SAs with invalid certificates.
984 - The IKE event counters, previously only available via ipsec listcounters, may
985 now be queried/reset via vici and the new swanctl --counters command. They are
986 provided by the new optional counters plugin.
988 - Class attributes received in RADIUS Access-Accept messages may optionally be
989 added to RADIUS accounting messages.
991 - Inbound marks may optionally be installed on the SA again (was removed with
992 5.5.2) by enabling the mark_in_sa option in swanctl.conf.
998 - Fixed a DoS vulnerability in the gmp plugin that was caused by insufficient
999 input validation when verifying RSA signatures, which requires decryption
1000 with the operation m^e mod n, where m is the signature, and e and n are the
1001 exponent and modulus of the public key. The value m is an integer between
1002 0 and n-1, however, the gmp plugin did not verify this. So if m equals n the
1003 calculation results in 0, in which case mpz_export() returns NULL. This
1004 result wasn't handled properly causing a null-pointer dereference.
1005 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2017-11185.
1007 - New SWIMA IMC/IMV pair implements the "draft-ietf-sacm-nea-swima-patnc"
1008 Internet Draft and has been demonstrated at the IETF 99 Prague Hackathon.
1010 - The IMV database template has been adapted to achieve full compliance
1011 with the ISO 19770-2:2015 SWID tag standard.
1013 - The sw-collector tool extracts software events from apt history logs
1014 and stores them in an SQLite database to be used by the SWIMA IMC.
1015 The tool can also generate SWID tags both for installed and removed
1018 - The pt-tls-client can attach and use TPM 2.0 protected private keys
1019 via the --keyid parameter.
1021 - libtpmtss supports Intel's TSS2 Architecture Broker and Resource
1022 Manager interface (tcti-tabrmd).
1024 - The new eap-aka-3gpp plugin implements the 3GPP MILENAGE algorithms
1025 in software. K (optionally concatenated with OPc) may be configured as
1028 - CHILD_SA rekeying was fixed in charon-tkm and was slightly changed: The
1029 switch to the new outbound IPsec SA now happens via SPI on the outbound
1030 policy on Linux, and in case of lost rekey collisions no outbound SA/policy
1031 is temporarily installed for the redundant CHILD_SA.
1033 - The new %unique-dir value for mark* settings allocates separate unique marks
1034 for each CHILD_SA direction (in/out).
1040 - Fixed a DoS vulnerability in the gmp plugin that was caused by insufficient
1041 input validation when verifying RSA signatures. More specifically,
1042 mpz_powm_sec() has two requirements regarding the passed exponent and modulus
1043 that the plugin did not enforce, if these are not met the calculation will
1044 result in a floating point exception that crashes the whole process.
1045 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2017-9022.
1047 - Fixed a DoS vulnerability in the x509 plugin that was caused because the ASN.1
1048 parser didn't handle ASN.1 CHOICE types properly, which could result in an
1049 infinite loop when parsing X.509 extensions that use such types.
1050 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2017-9023.
1052 - The behavior during IKEv2 CHILD_SA rekeying has been changed in order to avoid
1053 traffic loss. The responder now only installs the new inbound SA and delays
1054 installing the outbound SA until it receives the DELETE for the replaced
1055 CHILD_SA. Similarly, the inbound SA of the replaced CHILD_SA is not removed
1056 for a configurable amount of seconds (charon.delete_rekeyed_delay) after the
1057 DELETE has been processed to reduce the chance of dropping delayed packets.
1059 - The code base has been ported to Apple's ARM64 iOS platform, whose calling
1060 conventions for variadic and regular functions are different. This means
1061 assigning non-variadic functions to variadic function pointers does not work.
1062 To avoid this issue the enumerator_t interface has been changed and the
1063 signatures of the callback functions for enumerator_create_filter(), and the
1064 invoke_function() and find_first() methods on linked_list_t have been changed.
1065 The return type of find_first() also changed from status_t to bool.
1067 - Added support for fuzzing the certificate parser provided by the default
1068 plugins (x509, pem, gmp etc.) on Google's OSS-Fuzz infrastructure. Several
1069 issues found while fuzzing these plugins were fixed.
1071 - Two new options have been added to charon's retransmission settings:
1072 retransmit_limit and retransmit_jitter. The former adds an upper limit to the
1073 calculated retransmission timeout, the latter randomly reduces it.
1075 - A bug in swanctl's --load-creds command was fixed that caused unencrypted
1076 private keys to get unloaded if the command was called multiple times. The
1077 load-key VICI command now returns the key ID of the loaded key on success.
1079 - The credential manager now enumerates local credential sets before global
1080 ones. This means certificates supplied by the peer will now be preferred over
1081 certificates with the same identity that may be locally stored (e.g. in the
1084 - Added support for hardware offload of IPsec SAs as introduced by Linux 4.11
1085 for hardware that supports this.
1087 - When building the libraries monolithically and statically the plugin
1088 constructors are now hard-coded in each library so the plugin code is not
1089 removed by the linker because it thinks none of their symbols are ever
1092 - The pki tool loads the curve25519 plugin by default.
1098 - Support of Diffie-Hellman group 31 using Curve25519 for IKE as defined
1101 - Support of Ed25519 digital signature algorithm for IKEv2 as defined by
1102 draft-ietf-ipsecme-eddsa. Ed25519-based public key pairs, X.509 certificates
1103 and CRLs can be generated and printed by the pki tool.
1105 - The new "tpm" libtpmtss plugin allows to use persistent private RSA and ECDSA
1106 keys bound to a TPM 2.0 for both IKE and TLS authentication. Using the
1107 TPM 2.0 object handle as keyid parameter, the pki --pub tool can extract
1108 the public key from the TPM thereby replacing the aikpub2 tool. In a similar
1109 fashion pki --req can generate a PKCS#10 certificate request signed with
1110 the TPM private key.
1112 - The pki tool gained support for generating certificates with the RFC 3779
1113 addrblock extension. The charon addrblock plugin now dynamically narrows
1114 traffic selectors based on the certificate addrblocks instead of rejecting
1115 non-matching selectors completely. This allows generic connections, where
1116 the allowed selectors are defined by the used certificates only.
1118 - In-place update of cached base and delta CRLs does not leave dozens
1119 of stale copies in cache memory.
1121 - Several new features for the VICI interface and the swanctl utility: Querying
1122 specific pools, enumerating and unloading keys and shared secrets, loading
1123 keys and certificates from PKCS#11 tokens, the ability to initiate, install
1124 and uninstall connections and policies by their exact name (if multiple child
1125 sections in different connections share the same name), a command to initiate
1126 the rekeying of IKE and IPsec SAs, support for settings previously only
1127 supported by the old config files (plain pubkeys, dscp, certificate policies,
1128 IPv6 Transport Proxy Mode, NT Hash secrets, mediation extension).
1130 Important: Due to issues with VICI bindings that map sub-sections to
1131 dictionaries the CHILD_SA sections returned via list-sas now have a unique
1132 name, the original name of a CHILD_SA is returned in the "name" key of its
1139 - The newhope plugin implements the post-quantum NewHope key exchange algorithm
1140 proposed in their 2015 paper by Erdem Alkim, Léo Ducas, Thomas Pöppelmann and
1143 - The libstrongswan crypto factory now offers the registration of Extended
1144 Output Functions (XOFs). Currently supported XOFs are SHAKE128 and SHAKE256
1145 implemented by the sha3 plugin, ChaCHa20 implemented by the chapoly plugin
1146 and the more traditional MGF1 Mask Generation Functions based on the SHA-1,
1147 SHA-256 and SHA-512 hash algorithms implemented by the new mgf1 plugin.
1149 - The pki tool, with help of the pkcs1 or openssl plugins, can parse private
1150 keys in any of the supported formats without having to know the exact type.
1151 So instead of having to specify rsa or ecdsa explicitly the keyword priv may
1152 be used to indicate a private key of any type. Similarly, swanctl can load
1153 any type of private key from the swanctl/private directory.
1155 - The pki tool can handle RSASSA-PKCS1v1.5-with-SHA-3 signatures using the
1156 sha3 and gmp plugins.
1158 - The VICI flush-certs command flushes certificates from the volatile
1159 certificate cache. Optionally the type of the certificates to be
1160 flushed (e.g. type = x509_crl) can be specified.
1162 - Setting cache_crls = yes in strongswan.conf the vici plugin saves regular,
1163 base and delta CRLs to disk.
1165 - IKE fragmentation is now enabled by default with the default fragment size
1166 set to 1280 bytes for both IP address families.
1168 - libtpmtss: In the TSS2 API the function TeardownSocketTcti() was replaced by
1169 tss2_tcti_finalize().
1175 - The new libtpmtss library offers support for both TPM 1.2 and TPM 2.0
1176 Trusted Platform Modules. This allows the Attestation IMC/IMV pair to
1177 do TPM 2.0 based attestation.
1179 - The behavior during IKEv2 exchange collisions has been improved/fixed in
1180 several corner cases and support for TEMPORARY_FAILURE and CHILD_SA_NOT_FOUND
1181 notifies, as defined by RFC 7296, has been added.
1183 - IPsec policy priorities can be set manually (e.g. for high-priority drop
1184 policies) and outbound policies may be restricted to a network interface.
1186 - The scheme for the automatically calculated default priorities has been
1187 changed and now also considers port masks, which were added with 5.4.0.
1189 - FWD policies are now installed in both directions in regards to the traffic
1190 selectors. Because such "outbound" FWD policies could conflict with "inbound"
1191 FWD policies of other SAs they are installed with a lower priority and don't
1192 have a reqid set, which allows kernel plugins to distinguish between the two
1193 and prefer those with a reqid.
1195 - For outbound IPsec SAs no replay window is configured anymore.
1197 - Enhanced the functionality of the swanctl --list-conns command by listing
1198 IKE_SA and CHILD_SA reauthentication and rekeying settings, and EAP/XAuth
1199 identities and EAP types.
1201 - DNS servers installed by the resolve plugin are now refcounted, which should
1202 fix its use with make-before-break reauthentication. Any output written to
1203 stderr/stdout by resolvconf is now logged.
1205 - The methods in the kernel interfaces have been changed to take structs instead
1206 of long lists of arguments. Similarly the constructors for peer_cfg_t and
1207 child_cfg_t now take structs.
1213 - Support for IKEv2 redirection (RFC 5685) has been added. Plugins may
1214 implement the redirect_provider_t interface to decide if and when to redirect
1215 connecting clients. It is also possible to redirect established IKE_SAs based
1216 on different selectors via VICI/swanctl. Unless disabled in strongswan.conf
1217 the charon daemon will follow redirect requests received from servers.
1219 - The ike: prefix enables the explicit configuration of signature scheme
1220 constraints against IKEv2 authentication in rightauth, which allows the use
1221 of different signature schemes for trustchain verification and authentication.
1223 - The initiator of an IKEv2 make-before-break reauthentication now suspends
1224 online certificate revocation checks (OCSP, CRLs) until the new IKE_SA and all
1225 CHILD_SAs are established. This is required if the checks are done over the
1226 CHILD_SA established with the new IKE_SA. This is not possible until the
1227 initiator installs this SA and that only happens after the authentication is
1228 completed successfully. So we suspend the checks during the reauthentication
1229 and do them afterwards, if they fail the IKE_SA is closed. This change has no
1230 effect on the behavior during the authentication of the initial IKE_SA.
1232 - For the vici plugin a Vici:Session Perl CPAN module has been added to allow
1233 Perl applications to control and/or monitor the IKE daemon using the VICI
1234 interface, similar to the existing Python egg or Ruby gem.
1236 - Traffic selectors with port ranges can now be configured in the Linux kernel:
1237 e.g. remote_ts = 10.1.0.0/16[tcp/20-23] local_ts = dynamic[tcp/32768-65535].
1238 The port range must map to a port mask, though since the kernel does not
1239 support arbitrary ranges.
1241 - The vici plugin allows the configuration of IPv4 and IPv6 address ranges
1242 in local and remote traffic selectors. Since both the Linux kernel and
1243 iptables cannot handle arbitrary ranges, address ranges are mapped to the next
1244 larger CIDR subnet by the kernel-netlink and updown plugins, respectively.
1246 - Implemented IKEv1 IPv4/IPv6 address subnet and range identities that can be
1247 used as owners of shared secrets.
1253 - Properly handle potential EINTR errors in sigwaitinfo(2) calls that replaced
1254 sigwait(3) calls with 5.3.4.
1256 - RADIUS retransmission timeouts are now configurable, courtesy of Thom Troy.
1262 - Fixed an authentication bypass vulnerability in the eap-mschapv2 plugin that
1263 was caused by insufficient verification of the internal state when handling
1264 MSCHAPv2 Success messages received by the client.
1265 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2015-8023.
1267 - The sha3 plugin implements the SHA3 Keccak-F1600 hash algorithm family.
1268 Within the strongSwan framework SHA3 is currently used for BLISS signatures
1269 only because the OIDs for other signature algorithms haven't been defined
1270 yet. Also the use of SHA3 for IKEv2 has not been standardized yet.
1276 - Added support for the ChaCha20/Poly1305 AEAD cipher specified in RFC 7539 and
1277 RFC 7634 using the chacha20poly1305 ike/esp proposal keyword. The new chapoly
1278 plugin implements the cipher, if possible SSE-accelerated on x86/x64
1279 architectures. It is usable both in IKEv2 and the strongSwan libipsec ESP
1280 backend. On Linux 4.2 or newer the kernel-netlink plugin can configure the
1283 - The vici interface now supports the configuration of auxiliary certification
1284 authority information as CRL and OCSP URIs.
1286 - In the bliss plugin the c_indices derivation using a SHA-512 based random
1287 oracle has been fixed, generalized and standardized by employing the MGF1 mask
1288 generation function with SHA-512. As a consequence BLISS signatures using the
1289 improved oracle are not compatible with the earlier implementation.
1291 - Support for auto=route with right=%any for transport mode connections has
1292 been added (the ikev2/trap-any scenario provides examples).
1294 - The starter daemon does not flush IPsec policies and SAs anymore when it is
1295 stopped. Already existing duplicate policies are now overwritten by the IKE
1296 daemon when it installs its policies.
1298 - Init limits (like charon.init_limit_half_open) can now optionally be enforced
1299 when initiating SAs via VICI. For this, IKE_SAs initiated by the daemon are
1300 now also counted as half-open SAs, which, as a side-effect, fixes the status
1301 output while connecting (e.g. in ipsec status).
1303 - Symmetric configuration of EAP methods in left|rightauth is now possible when
1304 mutual EAP-only authentication is used (previously, the client had to
1305 configure rightauth=eap or rightauth=any, which prevented it from using this
1306 same config as responder).
1308 - The initiator flag in the IKEv2 header is compared again (wasn't the case
1309 since 5.0.0) and packets that have the flag set incorrectly are again ignored.
1311 - Implemented a demo Hardcopy Device IMC/IMV pair based on the "Hardcopy
1312 Device Health Assessment Trusted Network Connect Binding" (HCD-TNC)
1313 document drafted by the IEEE Printer Working Group (PWG).
1315 - Fixed IF-M segmentation which failed in the presence of multiple small
1316 attributes in front of a huge attribute to be segmented.
1322 - Fixed a vulnerability that allowed rogue servers with a valid certificate
1323 accepted by the client to trick it into disclosing its username and even
1324 password (if the client accepts EAP-GTC). This was caused because constraints
1325 against the responder's authentication were enforced too late.
1326 This vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2015-4171.
1332 - Fixed a denial-of-service and potential remote code execution vulnerability
1333 triggered by IKEv1/IKEv2 messages that contain payloads for the respective
1334 other IKE version. Such payload are treated specially since 5.2.2 but because
1335 they were still identified by their original payload type they were used as
1336 such in some places causing invalid function pointer dereferences.
1337 The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2015-3991.
1339 - The new aesni plugin provides CBC, CTR, XCBC, CMAC, CCM and GCM crypto
1340 primitives for AES-128/192/256. The plugin requires AES-NI and PCLMULQDQ
1341 instructions and works on both x86 and x64 architectures. It provides
1342 superior crypto performance in userland without any external libraries.
1348 - Added support for IKEv2 make-before-break reauthentication. By using a global
1349 CHILD_SA reqid allocation mechanism, charon supports overlapping CHILD_SAs.
1350 This allows the use of make-before-break instead of the previously supported
1351 break-before-make reauthentication, avoiding connectivity gaps during that
1352 procedure. As the new mechanism may fail with peers not supporting it (such
1353 as any previous strongSwan release) it must be explicitly enabled using
1354 the charon.make_before_break strongswan.conf option.
1356 - Support for "Signature Authentication in IKEv2" (RFC 7427) has been added.
1357 This allows the use of stronger hash algorithms for public key authentication.
1358 By default, signature schemes are chosen based on the strength of the
1359 signature key, but specific hash algorithms may be configured in leftauth.
1361 - Key types and hash algorithms specified in rightauth are now also checked
1362 against IKEv2 signature schemes. If such constraints are used for certificate
1363 chain validation in existing configurations, in particular with peers that
1364 don't support RFC 7427, it may be necessary to disable this feature with the
1365 charon.signature_authentication_constraints setting, because the signature
1366 scheme used in classic IKEv2 public key authentication may not be strong
1369 - The new connmark plugin allows a host to bind conntrack flows to a specific
1370 CHILD_SA by applying and restoring the SA mark to conntrack entries. This
1371 allows a peer to handle multiple transport mode connections coming over the
1372 same NAT device for client-initiated flows. A common use case is to protect
1373 L2TP/IPsec, as supported by some systems.
1375 - The forecast plugin can forward broadcast and multicast messages between
1376 connected clients and a LAN. For CHILD_SA using unique marks, it sets up
1377 the required Netfilter rules and uses a multicast/broadcast listener that
1378 forwards such messages to all connected clients. This plugin is designed for
1379 Windows 7 IKEv2 clients, which announces its services over the tunnel if the
1380 negotiated IPsec policy allows it.
1382 - For the vici plugin a Python Egg has been added to allow Python applications
1383 to control or monitor the IKE daemon using the VICI interface, similar to the
1384 existing ruby gem. The Python library has been contributed by Björn Schuberg.
1386 - EAP server methods now can fulfill public key constraints, such as rightcert
1387 or rightca. Additionally, public key and signature constraints can be
1388 specified for EAP methods in the rightauth keyword. Currently the EAP-TLS and
1389 EAP-TTLS methods provide verification details to constraints checking.
1391 - Upgrade of the BLISS post-quantum signature algorithm to the improved BLISS-B
1392 variant. Can be used in conjunction with the SHA256, SHA384 and SHA512 hash
1393 algorithms with SHA512 being the default.
1395 - The IF-IMV 1.4 interface now makes the IP address of the TNC access requestor
1396 as seen by the TNC server available to all IMVs. This information can be
1397 forwarded to policy enforcement points (e.g. firewalls or routers).
1399 - The new mutual tnccs-20 plugin parameter activates mutual TNC measurements
1400 in PB-TNC half-duplex mode between two endpoints over either a PT-EAP or
1401 PT-TLS transport medium.
1407 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by an IKEv2 Key Exchange
1408 payload that contains the Diffie-Hellman group 1025. This identifier was
1409 used internally for DH groups with custom generator and prime. Because
1410 these arguments are missing when creating DH objects based on the KE payload
1411 an invalid pointer dereference occurred. This allowed an attacker to crash
1412 the IKE daemon with a single IKE_SA_INIT message containing such a KE
1413 payload. The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2014-9221.
1415 - The left/rightid options in ipsec.conf, or any other identity in strongSwan,
1416 now accept prefixes to enforce an explicit type, such as email: or fqdn:.
1417 Note that no conversion is done for the remaining string, refer to
1418 ipsec.conf(5) for details.
1420 - The post-quantum Bimodal Lattice Signature Scheme (BLISS) can be used as
1421 an IKEv2 public key authentication method. The pki tool offers full support
1422 for the generation of BLISS key pairs and certificates.
1424 - Fixed mapping of integrity algorithms negotiated for AH via IKEv1. This could
1425 cause interoperability issues when connecting to older versions of charon.
1431 - The new charon-systemd IKE daemon implements an IKE daemon tailored for use
1432 with systemd. It avoids the dependency on ipsec starter and uses swanctl
1433 as configuration backend, building a simple and lightweight solution. It
1434 supports native systemd journal logging.
1436 - Support for IKEv2 fragmentation as per RFC 7383 has been added. Like IKEv1
1437 fragmentation it can be enabled by setting fragmentation=yes in ipsec.conf.
1439 - Support of the TCG TNC IF-M Attribute Segmentation specification proposal.
1440 All attributes can be segmented. Additionally TCG/SWID Tag, TCG/SWID Tag ID
1441 and IETF/Installed Packages attributes can be processed incrementally on a
1444 - The new ext-auth plugin calls an external script to implement custom IKE_SA
1445 authorization logic, courtesy of Vyronas Tsingaras.
1447 - For the vici plugin a ruby gem has been added to allow ruby applications
1448 to control or monitor the IKE daemon. The vici documentation has been updated
1449 to include a description of the available operations and some simple examples
1450 using both the libvici C interface and the ruby gem.
1456 - strongSwan has been ported to the Windows platform. Using a MinGW toolchain,
1457 many parts of the strongSwan codebase run natively on Windows 7 / 2008 R2
1458 and newer releases. charon-svc implements a Windows IKE service based on
1459 libcharon, the kernel-iph and kernel-wfp plugins act as networking and IPsec
1460 backend on the Windows platform. socket-win provides a native IKE socket
1461 implementation, while winhttp fetches CRL and OCSP information using the
1464 - The new vici plugin provides a Versatile IKE Configuration Interface for
1465 charon. Using the stable IPC interface, external applications can configure,
1466 control and monitor the IKE daemon. Instead of scripting the ipsec tool
1467 and generating ipsec.conf, third party applications can use the new interface
1468 for more control and better reliability.
1470 - Built upon the libvici client library, swanctl implements the first user of
1471 the VICI interface. Together with a swanctl.conf configuration file,
1472 connections can be defined, loaded and managed. swanctl provides a portable,
1473 complete IKE configuration and control interface for the command line.
1474 The first six swanctl example scenarios have been added.
1476 - The SWID IMV implements a JSON-based REST API which allows the exchange
1477 of SWID tags and Software IDs with the strongTNC policy manager.
1479 - The SWID IMC can extract all installed packages from the dpkg (Debian,
1480 Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc.), rpm (Fedora, RedHat, OpenSUSE, etc.), or
1481 pacman (Arch Linux, Manjaro, etc.) package managers, respectively, using the
1482 swidGenerator (https://github.com/strongswan/swidGenerator) which generates
1483 SWID tags according to the new ISO/IEC 19770-2:2014 standard.
1485 - All IMVs now share the access requestor ID, device ID and product info
1486 of an access requestor via a common imv_session object.
1488 - The Attestation IMC/IMV pair supports the IMA-NG measurement format
1489 introduced with the Linux 3.13 kernel.
1491 - The aikgen tool generates an Attestation Identity Key bound to a TPM.
1493 - Implemented the PT-EAP transport protocol (RFC 7171) for Trusted Network
1496 - The ipsec.conf replay_window option defines connection specific IPsec replay
1497 windows. Original patch courtesy of Zheng Zhong and Christophe Gouault from
1504 - Fixed an authentication bypass vulnerability triggered by rekeying an
1505 unestablished IKEv2 SA while it gets actively initiated. This allowed an
1506 attacker to trick a peer's IKE_SA state to established, without the need to
1507 provide any valid authentication credentials. The vulnerability has been
1508 registered as CVE-2014-2338.
1510 - The acert plugin evaluates X.509 Attribute Certificates. Group membership
1511 information encoded as strings can be used to fulfill authorization checks
1512 defined with the rightgroups option. Attribute Certificates can be loaded
1513 locally or get exchanged in IKEv2 certificate payloads.
1515 - The pki command gained support to generate X.509 Attribute Certificates
1516 using the --acert subcommand, while the --print command supports the ac type.
1517 The openac utility has been removed in favor of the new pki functionality.
1519 - The libtls TLS 1.2 implementation as used by EAP-(T)TLS and other protocols
1520 has been extended by AEAD mode support, currently limited to AES-GCM.
1526 - A new default configuration file layout is introduced. The new default
1527 strongswan.conf file mainly includes config snippets from the strongswan.d
1528 and strongswan.d/charon directories (the latter containing snippets for all
1529 plugins). The snippets, with commented defaults, are automatically
1530 generated and installed, if they don't exist yet. They are also installed
1531 in $prefix/share/strongswan/templates so existing files can be compared to
1532 the current defaults.
1534 - As an alternative to the non-extensible charon.load setting, the plugins
1535 to load in charon (and optionally other applications) can now be determined
1536 via the charon.plugins.<name>.load setting for each plugin (enabled in the
1537 new default strongswan.conf file via the charon.load_modular option).
1538 The load setting optionally takes a numeric priority value that allows
1539 reordering the plugins (otherwise the default plugin order is preserved).
1541 - All strongswan.conf settings that were formerly defined in library specific
1542 "global" sections are now application specific (e.g. settings for plugins in
1543 libstrongswan.plugins can now be set only for charon in charon.plugins).
1544 The old options are still supported, which now allows to define defaults for
1545 all applications in the libstrongswan section.
1547 - The ntru libstrongswan plugin supports NTRUEncrypt as a post-quantum
1548 computer IKE key exchange mechanism. The implementation is based on the
1549 ntru-crypto library from the NTRUOpenSourceProject. The supported security
1550 strengths are ntru112, ntru128, ntru192, and ntru256. Since the private DH
1551 group IDs 1030..1033 have been assigned, the strongSwan Vendor ID must be
1552 sent (charon.send_vendor_id = yes) in order to use NTRU.
1554 - Defined a TPMRA remote attestation workitem and added support for it to the
1557 - Compatibility issues between IPComp (compress=yes) and leftfirewall=yes as
1558 well as multiple subnets in left|rightsubnet have been fixed.
1560 - When enabling its "session" strongswan.conf option, the xauth-pam plugin opens
1561 and closes a PAM session for each established IKE_SA. Patch courtesy of
1564 - The strongSwan unit testing framework has been rewritten without the "check"
1565 dependency for improved flexibility and portability. It now properly supports
1566 multi-threaded and memory leak testing and brings a bunch of new test cases.
1572 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability and potential authorization bypass
1573 triggered by a crafted ID_DER_ASN1_DN ID payload. The cause is an insufficient
1574 length check when comparing such identities. The vulnerability has been
1575 registered as CVE-2013-6075.
1577 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by a crafted IKEv1
1578 fragmentation payload. The cause is a NULL pointer dereference. The
1579 vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-6076.
1581 - The lean stand-alone pt-tls-client can set up a RFC 6876 PT-TLS session
1582 with a strongSwan policy enforcement point which uses the tnc-pdp charon
1585 - The new TCG TNC SWID IMC/IMV pair supports targeted SWID requests for either
1586 full SWID Tag or concise SWID Tag ID inventories.
1588 - The XAuth backend in eap-radius now supports multiple XAuth exchanges for
1589 different credential types and display messages. All user input gets
1590 concatenated and verified with a single User-Password RADIUS attribute on
1591 the AAA. With an AAA supporting it, one for example can implement
1592 Password+Token authentication with proper dialogs on iOS and OS X clients.
1594 - charon supports IKEv1 Mode Config exchange in push mode. The ipsec.conf
1595 modeconfig=push option enables it for both client and server, the same way
1598 - Using the "ah" ipsec.conf keyword on both IKEv1 and IKEv2 connections,
1599 charon can negotiate and install Security Associations integrity-protected by
1600 the Authentication Header protocol. Supported are plain AH(+IPComp) SAs only,
1601 but not the deprecated RFC2401 style ESP+AH bundles.
1603 - The generation of initialization vectors for IKE and ESP (when using libipsec)
1604 is now modularized and IVs for e.g. AES-GCM are now correctly allocated
1605 sequentially, while other algorithms like AES-CBC still use random IVs.
1607 - The left and right options in ipsec.conf can take multiple address ranges
1608 and subnets. This allows connection matching against a larger set of
1609 addresses, for example to use a different connection for clients connecting
1610 from a internal network.
1612 - For all those who have a queasy feeling about the NIST elliptic curve set,
1613 the Brainpool curves introduced for use with IKE by RFC 6932 might be a
1614 more trustworthy alternative.
1616 - The kernel-libipsec userland IPsec backend now supports usage statistics,
1617 volume based rekeying and accepts ESPv3 style TFC padded packets.
1619 - With two new strongswan.conf options fwmarks can be used to implement
1620 host-to-host tunnels with kernel-libipsec.
1622 - load-tester supports transport mode connections and more complex traffic
1623 selectors, including such using unique ports for each tunnel.
1625 - The new dnscert plugin provides support for authentication via CERT RRs that
1626 are protected via DNSSEC. The plugin was created by Ruslan N. Marchenko.
1628 - The eap-radius plugin supports forwarding of several Cisco Unity specific
1629 RADIUS attributes in corresponding configuration payloads.
1631 - Database transactions are now abstracted and implemented by the two backends.
1632 If you use MySQL make sure all tables use the InnoDB engine.
1634 - libstrongswan now can provide an experimental custom implementation of the
1635 printf family functions based on klibc if neither Vstr nor glibc style printf
1636 hooks are available. This can avoid the Vstr dependency on some systems at
1637 the cost of slower and less complete printf functions.
1643 - Fixed a denial-of-service vulnerability triggered by specific XAuth usernames
1644 and EAP identities (since 5.0.3), and PEM files (since 4.1.11). The crash
1645 was caused by insufficient error handling in the is_asn1() function.
1646 The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-5018.
1648 - The new charon-cmd command line IKE client can establish road warrior
1649 connections using IKEv1 or IKEv2 with different authentication profiles.
1650 It does not depend on any configuration files and can be configured using a
1651 few simple command line options.
1653 - The kernel-pfroute networking backend has been greatly improved. It now
1654 can install virtual IPs on TUN devices on OS X and FreeBSD, allowing these
1655 systems to act as a client in common road warrior scenarios.
1657 - The new kernel-libipsec plugin uses TUN devices and libipsec to provide IPsec
1658 processing in userland on Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
1660 - The eap-radius plugin can now serve as an XAuth backend called xauth-radius,
1661 directly verifying XAuth credentials using RADIUS User-Name/User-Password
1662 attributes. This is more efficient than the existing xauth-eap+eap-radius
1663 combination, and allows RADIUS servers without EAP support to act as AAA
1666 - The new osx-attr plugin installs configuration attributes (currently DNS
1667 servers) via SystemConfiguration on Mac OS X. The keychain plugin provides
1668 certificates from the OS X keychain service.
1670 - The sshkey plugin parses SSH public keys, which, together with the --agent
1671 option for charon-cmd, allows the use of ssh-agent for authentication.
1672 To configure SSH keys in ipsec.conf the left|rightrsasigkey options are
1673 replaced with left|rightsigkey, which now take public keys in one of three
1674 formats: SSH (RFC 4253, ssh: prefix), DNSKEY (RFC 3110, dns: prefix), and
1675 PKCS#1 (the default, no prefix).
1677 - Extraction of certificates and private keys from PKCS#12 files is now provided
1678 by the new pkcs12 plugin or the openssl plugin. charon-cmd (--p12) as well
1679 as charon (via P12 token in ipsec.secrets) can make use of this.
1681 - IKEv2 can now negotiate transport mode and IPComp in NAT situations.
1683 - IKEv2 exchange initiators now properly close an established IKE or CHILD_SA
1684 on error conditions using an additional exchange, keeping state in sync
1687 - Using a SQL database interface a Trusted Network Connect (TNC) Policy Manager
1688 can generate specific measurement workitems for an arbitrary number of
1689 Integrity Measurement Verifiers (IMVs) based on the history of the VPN user
1692 - Several core classes in libstrongswan are now tested with unit tests. These
1693 can be enabled with --enable-unit-tests and run with 'make check'. Coverage
1694 reports can be generated with --enable-coverage and 'make coverage' (this
1695 disables any optimization, so it should not be enabled when building
1696 production releases).
1698 - The leak-detective developer tool has been greatly improved. It works much
1699 faster/stabler with multiple threads, does not use deprecated malloc hooks
1700 anymore and has been ported to OS X.
1702 - chunk_hash() is now based on SipHash-2-4 with a random key. This provides
1703 better distribution and prevents hash flooding attacks when used with
1706 - All default plugins implement the get_features() method to define features
1707 and their dependencies. The plugin loader has been improved, so that plugins
1708 in a custom load statement can be ordered freely or to express preferences
1709 without being affected by dependencies between plugin features.
1711 - A centralized thread can take care for watching multiple file descriptors
1712 concurrently. This removes the need for a dedicated listener threads in
1713 various plugins. The number of "reserved" threads for such tasks has been
1714 reduced to about five, depending on the plugin configuration.
1716 - Plugins that can be controlled by a UNIX socket IPC mechanism gained network
1717 transparency. Third party applications querying these plugins now can use
1718 TCP connections from a different host.
1720 - libipsec now supports AES-GCM.
1726 - Fixed a security vulnerability in the openssl plugin which was reported by
1727 Kevin Wojtysiak. The vulnerability has been registered as CVE-2013-2944.
1728 Before the fix, if the openssl plugin's ECDSA signature verification was used,
1729 due to a misinterpretation of the error code returned by the OpenSSL
1730 ECDSA_verify() function, an empty or zeroed signature was accepted as a
1733 - The handling of a couple of other non-security relevant openssl return codes
1736 - The tnc_ifmap plugin now publishes virtual IPv4 and IPv6 addresses via its
1737 TCG TNC IF-MAP 2.1 interface.
1739 - The charon.initiator_only option causes charon to ignore IKE initiation
1742 - The openssl plugin can now use the openssl-fips library.
1748 - The new ipseckey plugin enables authentication based on trustworthy public
1749 keys stored as IPSECKEY resource records in the DNS and protected by DNSSEC.
1750 To do so it uses a DNSSEC enabled resolver, like the one provided by the new
1751 unbound plugin, which is based on libldns and libunbound. Both plugins were
1752 created by Reto Guadagnini.
1754 - Implemented the TCG TNC IF-IMV 1.4 draft making access requestor identities
1755 available to an IMV. The OS IMV stores the AR identity together with the
1756 device ID in the attest database.
1758 - The openssl plugin now uses the AES-NI accelerated version of AES-GCM
1759 if the hardware supports it.
1761 - The eap-radius plugin can now assign virtual IPs to IKE clients using the
1762 Framed-IP-Address attribute by using the "%radius" named pool in the
1763 rightsourceip ipsec.conf option. Cisco Banner attributes are forwarded to
1764 Unity-capable IKEv1 clients during mode config. charon now sends Interim
1765 Accounting updates if requested by the RADIUS server, reports
1766 sent/received packets in Accounting messages, and adds a Terminate-Cause
1767 to Accounting-Stops.
1769 - The recently introduced "ipsec listcounters" command can report connection
1770 specific counters by passing a connection name, and global or connection
1771 counters can be reset by the "ipsec resetcounters" command.
1773 - The strongSwan libpttls library provides an experimental implementation of
1774 PT-TLS (RFC 6876), a Posture Transport Protocol over TLS.
1776 - The charon systime-fix plugin can disable certificate lifetime checks on
1777 embedded systems if the system time is obviously out of sync after boot-up.
1778 Certificates lifetimes get checked once the system time gets sane, closing
1779 or reauthenticating connections using expired certificates.
1781 - The "ikedscp" ipsec.conf option can set DiffServ code points on outgoing
1784 - The new xauth-noauth plugin allows to use basic RSA or PSK authentication with
1785 clients that cannot be configured without XAuth authentication. The plugin
1786 simply concludes the XAuth exchange successfully without actually performing
1787 any authentication. Therefore, to use this backend it has to be selected
1788 explicitly with rightauth2=xauth-noauth.
1790 - The new charon-tkm IKEv2 daemon delegates security critical operations to a
1791 separate process. This has the benefit that the network facing daemon has no
1792 knowledge of keying material used to protect child SAs. Thus subverting
1793 charon-tkm does not result in the compromise of cryptographic keys.
1794 The extracted functionality has been implemented from scratch in a minimal TCB
1795 (trusted computing base) in the Ada programming language. Further information
1796 can be found at https://www.codelabs.ch/tkm/.
1801 - Implemented all IETF Standard PA-TNC attributes and an OS IMC/IMV
1802 pair using them to transfer operating system information.
1804 - The new "ipsec listcounters" command prints a list of global counter values
1805 about received and sent IKE messages and rekeyings.
1807 - A new lookip plugin can perform fast lookup of tunnel information using a
1808 clients virtual IP and can send notifications about established or deleted
1809 tunnels. The "ipsec lookip" command can be used to query such information
1810 or receive notifications.
1812 - The new error-notify plugin catches some common error conditions and allows
1813 an external application to receive notifications for them over a UNIX socket.
1815 - IKE proposals can now use a PRF algorithm different to that defined for
1816 integrity protection. If an algorithm with a "prf" prefix is defined
1817 explicitly (such as prfsha1 or prfsha256), no implicit PRF algorithm based on
1818 the integrity algorithm is added to the proposal.
1820 - The pkcs11 plugin can now load leftcert certificates from a smartcard for a
1821 specific ipsec.conf conn section and cacert CA certificates for a specific ca
1824 - The load-tester plugin gained additional options for certificate generation
1825 and can load keys and multiple CA certificates from external files. It can
1826 install a dedicated outer IP address for each tunnel and tunnel initiation
1827 batches can be triggered and monitored externally using the
1828 "ipsec load-tester" tool.
1830 - PKCS#7 container parsing has been modularized, and the openssl plugin
1831 gained an alternative implementation to decrypt and verify such files.
1832 In contrast to our own DER parser, OpenSSL can handle BER files, which is
1833 required for interoperability of our scepclient with EJBCA.
1835 - Support for the proprietary IKEv1 fragmentation extension has been added.
1836 Fragments are always handled on receipt but only sent if supported by the peer
1837 and if enabled with the new fragmentation ipsec.conf option.
1839 - IKEv1 in charon can now parse certificates received in PKCS#7 containers and
1840 supports NAT traversal as used by Windows clients. Patches courtesy of
1843 - The new rdrand plugin provides a high quality / high performance random
1844 source using the Intel rdrand instruction found on Ivy Bridge processors.
1846 - The integration test environment was updated and now uses KVM and reproducible
1847 guest images based on Debian.
1853 - Introduced the sending of the standard IETF Assessment Result
1854 PA-TNC attribute by all strongSwan Integrity Measurement Verifiers.
1856 - Extended PTS Attestation IMC/IMV pair to provide full evidence of
1857 the Linux IMA measurement process. All pertinent file information
1858 of a Linux OS can be collected and stored in an SQL database.
1860 - The PA-TNC and PB-TNC protocols can now process huge data payloads
1861 >64 kB by distributing PA-TNC attributes over multiple PA-TNC messages
1862 and these messages over several PB-TNC batches. As long as no
1863 consolidated recommendation from all IMVs can be obtained, the TNC
1864 server requests more client data by sending an empty SDATA batch.
1866 - The rightgroups2 ipsec.conf option can require group membership during
1867 a second authentication round, for example during XAuth authentication
1868 against a RADIUS server.
1870 - The xauth-pam backend can authenticate IKEv1 XAuth and Hybrid authenticated
1871 clients against any PAM service. The IKEv2 eap-gtc plugin does not use
1872 PAM directly anymore, but can use any XAuth backend to verify credentials,
1873 including xauth-pam.
1875 - The new unity plugin brings support for some parts of the IKEv1 Cisco Unity
1876 Extension. As client, charon narrows traffic selectors to the received
1877 Split-Include attributes and automatically installs IPsec bypass policies
1878 for received Local-LAN attributes. As server, charon sends Split-Include
1879 attributes for leftsubnet definitions containing multiple subnets to Unity-
1882 - An EAP-Nak payload is returned by clients if the gateway requests an EAP
1883 method that the client does not support. Clients can also request a specific
1884 EAP method by configuring that method with leftauth.
1886 - The eap-dynamic plugin handles EAP-Nak payloads returned by clients and uses
1887 these to select a different EAP method supported/requested by the client.
1888 The plugin initially requests the first registered method or the first method
1889 configured with charon.plugins.eap-dynamic.preferred.
1891 - The new left/rightdns options specify connection specific DNS servers to
1892 request/respond in IKEv2 configuration payloads or IKEv2 mode config. leftdns
1893 can be any (comma separated) combination of %config4 and %config6 to request
1894 multiple servers, both for IPv4 and IPv6. rightdns takes a list of DNS server
1895 IP addresses to return.
1897 - The left/rightsourceip options now accept multiple addresses or pools.
1898 leftsourceip can be any (comma separated) combination of %config4, %config6
1899 or fixed IP addresses to request. rightsourceip accepts multiple explicitly
1900 specified or referenced named pools.
1902 - Multiple connections can now share a single address pool when they use the
1903 same definition in one of the rightsourceip pools.
1905 - The options charon.interfaces_ignore and charon.interfaces_use allow one to
1906 configure the network interfaces used by the daemon.
1908 - The kernel-netlink plugin supports the charon.install_virtual_ip_on option,
1909 which specifies the interface on which virtual IP addresses will be installed.
1910 If it is not specified the current behavior of using the outbound interface
1913 - The kernel-netlink plugin tries to keep the current source address when
1914 looking for valid routes to reach other hosts.
1916 - The autotools build has been migrated to use a config.h header. strongSwan
1917 development headers will get installed during "make install" if
1918 --with-dev-headers has been passed to ./configure.
1920 - All crypto primitives gained return values for most operations, allowing
1921 crypto backends to fail, for example when using hardware accelerators.
1927 - The charon IKE daemon gained experimental support for the IKEv1 protocol.
1928 Pluto has been removed from the 5.x series, and unless strongSwan is
1929 configured with --disable-ikev1 or --disable-ikev2, charon handles both
1930 keying protocols. The feature-set of IKEv1 in charon is almost on par with
1931 pluto, but currently does not support AH or bundled AH+ESP SAs. Beside
1932 RSA/ECDSA, PSK and XAuth, charon also supports the Hybrid authentication
1935 - Charon's bus_t has been refactored so that loggers and other listeners are
1936 now handled separately. The single lock was previously cause for deadlocks
1937 if extensive listeners, such as the one provided by the updown plugin, wanted
1938 to acquire locks that were held by other threads which in turn tried to log
1939 messages, and thus were waiting to acquire the same lock currently held by
1940 the thread calling the listener.
1941 The implemented changes also allow the use of a read/write-lock for the
1942 loggers which increases performance if multiple loggers are registered.
1943 Besides several interface changes this last bit also changes the semantics
1944 for loggers as these may now be called by multiple threads at the same time.
1946 - Source routes are reinstalled if interfaces are reactivated or IP addresses
1949 - The thread pool (processor_t) now has more control over the lifecycle of
1950 a job (see job.h for details). In particular, it now controls the destruction
1951 of jobs after execution and the cancellation of jobs during shutdown. Due to
1952 these changes the requeueing feature, previously available to callback_job_t
1953 only, is now available to all jobs (in addition to a new rescheduling
1956 - In addition to trustchain key strength definitions for different public key
1957 systems, the rightauth option now takes a list of signature hash algorithms
1958 considered save for trustchain validation. For example, the setting
1959 rightauth=rsa-2048-ecdsa-256-sha256-sha384-sha512 requires a trustchain
1960 that uses at least RSA-2048 or ECDSA-256 keys and certificate signatures
1961 using SHA-256 or better.
1967 - Fixed a security vulnerability in the gmp plugin. If this plugin was used
1968 for RSA signature verification an empty or zeroed signature was handled as
1971 - Fixed several issues with reauthentication and address updates.
1977 - The tnc-pdp plugin implements a RADIUS server interface allowing
1978 a strongSwan TNC server to act as a Policy Decision Point.
1980 - The eap-radius authentication backend enforces Session-Timeout attributes
1981 using RFC4478 repeated authentication and acts upon RADIUS Dynamic
1982 Authorization extensions, RFC 5176. Currently supported are disconnect
1983 requests and CoA messages containing a Session-Timeout.
1985 - The eap-radius plugin can forward arbitrary RADIUS attributes from and to
1986 clients using custom IKEv2 notify payloads. The new radattr plugin reads
1987 attributes to include from files and prints received attributes to the
1990 - Added support for untruncated MD5 and SHA1 HMACs in ESP as used in
1993 - The cmac plugin implements the AES-CMAC-96 and AES-CMAC-PRF-128 algorithms
1994 as defined in RFC 4494 and RFC 4615, respectively.
1996 - The resolve plugin automatically installs nameservers via resolvconf(8),
1997 if it is installed, instead of modifying /etc/resolv.conf directly.
1999 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports now raw RSA public keys in RFC 3110
2000 DNSKEY and PKCS#1 file format.
2006 - Upgraded the TCG IF-IMC and IF-IMV C API to the upcoming version 1.3
2007 which supports IF-TNCCS 2.0 long message types, the exclusive flags
2008 and multiple IMC/IMV IDs. Both the TNC Client and Server as well as
2009 the "Test", "Scanner", and "Attestation" IMC/IMV pairs were updated.
2011 - Fully implemented the "TCG Attestation PTS Protocol: Binding to IF-M"
2012 standard (TLV-based messages only). TPM-based remote attestation of
2013 Linux IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) possible. Measurement
2014 reference values are automatically stored in an SQLite database.
2016 - The EAP-RADIUS authentication backend supports RADIUS accounting. It sends
2017 start/stop messages containing Username, Framed-IP and Input/Output-Octets
2018 attributes and has been tested against FreeRADIUS and Microsoft NPS.
2020 - Added support for PKCS#8 encoded private keys via the libstrongswan
2021 pkcs8 plugin. This is the default format used by some OpenSSL tools since
2022 version 1.0.0 (e.g. openssl req with -keyout).
2024 - Added session resumption support to the strongSwan TLS stack.
2030 - Because of changing checksums before and after installation which caused
2031 the integrity tests to fail we avoided directly linking libsimaka, libtls and
2032 libtnccs to those libcharon plugins which make use of these dynamic libraries.
2033 Instead we linked the libraries to the charon daemon. Unfortunately Ubuntu
2034 11.10 activated the --as-needed ld option which discards explicit links
2035 to dynamic libraries that are not actually used by the charon daemon itself,
2036 thus causing failures during the loading of the plugins which depend on these
2037 libraries for resolving external symbols.
2039 - Therefore our approach of computing integrity checksums for plugins had to be
2040 changed radically by moving the hash generation from the compilation to the
2041 post-installation phase.
2047 - The new libstrongswan certexpire plugin collects expiration information of
2048 all used certificates and exports them to CSV files. It either directly
2049 exports them or uses cron style scheduling for batch exports.
2051 - starter passes unresolved hostnames to charon, allowing it to do name
2052 resolution not before the connection attempt. This is especially useful with
2053 connections between hosts using dynamic IP addresses. Thanks to Mirko Parthey
2054 for the initial patch.
2056 - The android plugin can now be used without the Android frontend patch and
2057 provides DNS server registration and logging to logcat.
2059 - Pluto and starter (plus stroke and whack) have been ported to Android.
2061 - Support for ECDSA private and public key operations has been added to the
2062 pkcs11 plugin. The plugin now also provides DH and ECDH via PKCS#11 and can
2063 use tokens as random number generators (RNG). By default only private key
2064 operations are enabled, more advanced features have to be enabled by their
2065 option in strongswan.conf. This also applies to public key operations (even
2066 for keys not stored on the token) which were enabled by default before.
2068 - The libstrongswan plugin system now supports detailed plugin dependencies.
2069 Many plugins have been extended to export its capabilities and requirements.
2070 This allows the plugin loader to resolve plugin loading order automatically,
2071 and in future releases, to dynamically load the required features on demand.
2072 Existing third party plugins are source (but not binary) compatible if they
2073 properly initialize the new get_features() plugin function to NULL.
2075 - The tnc-ifmap plugin implements a TNC IF-MAP 2.0 client which can deliver
2076 metadata about IKE_SAs via a SOAP interface to a MAP server. The tnc-ifmap
2077 plugin requires the Apache Axis2/C library.
2083 - Our private libraries (e.g. libstrongswan) are not installed directly in
2084 prefix/lib anymore. Instead a subdirectory is used (prefix/lib/ipsec/ by
2085 default). The plugins directory is also moved from libexec/ipsec/ to that
2088 - The dynamic IMC/IMV libraries were moved from the plugins directory to
2089 a new imcvs directory in the prefix/lib/ipsec/ subdirectory.
2091 - Job priorities were introduced to prevent thread starvation caused by too
2092 many threads handling blocking operations (such as CRL fetching). Refer to
2093 strongswan.conf(5) for details.
2095 - Two new strongswan.conf options allow to fine-tune performance on IKEv2
2096 gateways by dropping IKE_SA_INIT requests on high load.
2098 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports start PASS and DROP shunt policies
2099 preventing traffic to go through IPsec connections. Installation of the
2100 shunt policies either via the XFRM netfilter or PFKEYv2 IPsec kernel
2103 - The history of policies installed in the kernel is now tracked so that e.g.
2104 trap policies are correctly updated when reauthenticated SAs are terminated.
2106 - IMC/IMV Scanner pair implementing the RFC 5792 PA-TNC (IF-M) protocol.
2107 Using "netstat -l" the IMC scans open listening ports on the TNC client
2108 and sends a port list to the IMV which based on a port policy decides if
2109 the client is admitted to the network.
2110 (--enable-imc-scanner/--enable-imv-scanner).
2112 - IMC/IMV Test pair implementing the RFC 5792 PA-TNC (IF-M) protocol.
2113 (--enable-imc-test/--enable-imv-test).
2115 - The IKEv2 close action does not use the same value as the ipsec.conf dpdaction
2116 setting, but the value defined by its own closeaction keyword. The action
2117 is triggered if the remote peer closes a CHILD_SA unexpectedly.
2123 - The whitelist plugin for the IKEv2 daemon maintains an in-memory identity
2124 whitelist. Any connection attempt of peers not whitelisted will get rejected.
2125 The 'ipsec whitelist' utility provides a simple command line frontend for
2126 whitelist administration.
2128 - The duplicheck plugin provides a specialized form of duplicate checking,
2129 doing a liveness check on the old SA and optionally notify a third party
2130 application about detected duplicates.
2132 - The coupling plugin permanently couples two or more devices by limiting
2133 authentication to previously used certificates.
2135 - In the case that the peer config and child config don't have the same name
2136 (usually in SQL database defined connections), ipsec up|route <peer config>
2137 starts|routes all associated child configs and ipsec up|route <child config>
2138 only starts|routes the specific child config.
2140 - fixed the encoding and parsing of X.509 certificate policy statements (CPS).
2142 - Duncan Salerno contributed the eap-sim-pcsc plugin implementing a
2143 pcsc-lite based SIM card backend.
2145 - The eap-peap plugin implements the EAP PEAP protocol. Interoperates
2146 successfully with a FreeRADIUS server and Windows 7 Agile VPN clients.
2148 - The IKEv2 daemon charon rereads strongswan.conf on SIGHUP and instructs
2149 all plugins to reload. Currently only the eap-radius and the attr plugins
2150 support configuration reloading.
2152 - Added userland support to the IKEv2 daemon for Extended Sequence Numbers
2153 support coming with Linux 2.6.39. To enable ESN on a connection, add
2154 the 'esn' keyword to the proposal. The default proposal uses 32-bit sequence
2155 numbers only ('noesn'), and the same value is used if no ESN mode is
2156 specified. To negotiate ESN support with the peer, include both, e.g.
2157 esp=aes128-sha1-esn-noesn.
2159 - In addition to ESN, Linux 2.6.39 gained support for replay windows larger
2160 than 32 packets. The new global strongswan.conf option 'charon.replay_window'
2161 configures the size of the replay window, in packets.
2167 - Sansar Choinyambuu implemented the RFC 5793 Posture Broker Protocol (BP)
2168 compatible with Trusted Network Connect (TNC). The TNCCS 2.0 protocol
2169 requires the tnccs_20, tnc_imc and tnc_imv plugins but does not depend
2170 on the libtnc library. Any available IMV/IMC pairs conforming to the
2171 Trusted Computing Group's TNC-IF-IMV/IMC 1.2 interface specification
2172 can be loaded via /etc/tnc_config.
2174 - Re-implemented the TNCCS 1.1 protocol by using the tnc_imc and tnc_imv
2175 in place of the external libtnc library.
2177 - The tnccs_dynamic plugin loaded on a TNC server in addition to the
2178 tnccs_11 and tnccs_20 plugins, dynamically detects the IF-TNCCS
2179 protocol version used by a TNC client and invokes an instance of
2180 the corresponding protocol stack.
2182 - IKE and ESP proposals can now be stored in an SQL database using a
2183 new proposals table. The start_action field in the child_configs
2184 tables allows the automatic starting or routing of connections stored
2187 - The new certificate_authorities and certificate_distribution_points
2188 tables make it possible to store CRL and OCSP Certificate Distribution
2189 points in an SQL database.
2191 - The new 'include' statement allows to recursively include other files in
2192 strongswan.conf. Existing sections and values are thereby extended and
2193 replaced, respectively.
2195 - Due to the changes in the parser for strongswan.conf, the configuration
2196 syntax for the attr plugin has changed. Previously, it was possible to
2197 specify multiple values of a specific attribute type by adding multiple
2198 key/value pairs with the same key (e.g. dns) to the plugins.attr section.
2199 Because values with the same key now replace previously defined values
2200 this is not possible anymore. As an alternative, multiple values can be
2201 specified by separating them with a comma (e.g. dns = 1.2.3.4, 2.3.4.5).
2203 - ipsec listalgs now appends (set in square brackets) to each crypto
2204 algorithm listed the plugin that registered the function.
2206 - Traffic Flow Confidentiality padding supported with Linux 2.6.38 can be used
2207 by the IKEv2 daemon. The ipsec.conf 'tfc' keyword pads all packets to a given
2208 boundary, the special value '%mtu' pads all packets to the path MTU.
2210 - The new af-alg plugin can use various crypto primitives of the Linux Crypto
2211 API using the AF_ALG interface introduced with 2.6.38. This removes the need
2212 for additional userland implementations of symmetric cipher, hash, hmac and
2215 - The IKEv2 daemon supports the INITIAL_CONTACT notify as initiator and
2216 responder. The notify is sent when initiating configurations with a unique
2217 policy, set in ipsec.conf via the global 'uniqueids' option.
2219 - The conftest conformance testing framework enables the IKEv2 stack to perform
2220 many tests using a distinct tool and configuration frontend. Various hooks
2221 can alter reserved bits, flags, add custom notifies and proposals, reorder
2222 or drop messages and much more. It is enabled using the --enable-conftest
2225 - The new libstrongswan constraints plugin provides advanced X.509 constraint
2226 checking. In addition to X.509 pathLen constraints, the plugin checks for
2227 nameConstraints and certificatePolicies, including policyMappings and
2228 policyConstraints. The x509 certificate plugin and the pki tool have been
2229 enhanced to support these extensions. The new left/rightcertpolicy ipsec.conf
2230 connection keywords take OIDs a peer certificate must have.
2232 - The left/rightauth ipsec.conf keywords accept values with a minimum strength
2233 for trustchain public keys in bits, such as rsa-2048 or ecdsa-256.
2235 - The revocation and x509 libstrongswan plugins and the pki tool gained basic
2236 support for delta CRLs.
2242 - IMPORTANT: the default keyexchange mode 'ike' is changing with release 4.5
2243 from 'ikev1' to 'ikev2', thus commemorating the five year anniversary of the
2244 IKEv2 RFC 4306 and its mature successor RFC 5996. The time has definitively
2245 come for IKEv1 to go into retirement and to cede its place to the much more
2246 robust, powerful and versatile IKEv2 protocol!
2248 - Added new ctr, ccm and gcm plugins providing Counter, Counter with CBC-MAC
2249 and Galois/Counter Modes based on existing CBC implementations. These
2250 new plugins bring support for AES and Camellia Counter and CCM algorithms
2251 and the AES GCM algorithms for use in IKEv2.
2253 - The new pkcs11 plugin brings full Smartcard support to the IKEv2 daemon and
2254 the pki utility using one or more PKCS#11 libraries. It currently supports
2255 RSA private and public key operations and loads X.509 certificates from
2258 - Implemented a general purpose TLS stack based on crypto and credential
2259 primitives of libstrongswan. libtls supports TLS versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2,
2260 ECDHE-ECDSA/RSA, DHE-RSA and RSA key exchange algorithms and RSA/ECDSA based
2261 client authentication.
2263 - Based on libtls, the eap-tls plugin brings certificate based EAP
2264 authentication for client and server. It is compatible to Windows 7 IKEv2
2265 Smartcard authentication and the OpenSSL based FreeRADIUS EAP-TLS backend.
2267 - Implemented the TNCCS 1.1 Trusted Network Connect protocol using the
2268 libtnc library on the strongSwan client and server side via the tnccs_11
2269 plugin and optionally connecting to a TNC@FHH-enhanced FreeRADIUS AAA server.
2270 Depending on the resulting TNC Recommendation, strongSwan clients are granted
2271 access to a network behind a strongSwan gateway (allow), are put into a
2272 remediation zone (isolate) or are blocked (none), respectively. Any number
2273 of Integrity Measurement Collector/Verifier pairs can be attached
2274 via the tnc-imc and tnc-imv charon plugins.
2276 - The IKEv1 daemon pluto now uses the same kernel interfaces as the IKEv2
2277 daemon charon. As a result of this, pluto now supports xfrm marks which
2278 were introduced in charon with 4.4.1.
2280 - Applets for Maemo 5 (Nokia) allow to easily configure and control IKEv2
2281 based VPN connections with EAP authentication on supported devices.
2283 - The RADIUS plugin eap-radius now supports multiple RADIUS servers for
2284 redundant setups. Servers are selected by a defined priority, server load and
2287 - The simple led plugin controls hardware LEDs through the Linux LED subsystem.
2288 It currently shows activity of the IKE daemon and is a good example how to
2289 implement a simple event listener.
2291 - Improved MOBIKE behavior in several corner cases, for instance, if the
2292 initial responder moves to a different address.
2294 - Fixed left-/rightnexthop option, which was broken since 4.4.0.
2296 - Fixed a bug not releasing a virtual IP address to a pool if the XAUTH
2297 identity was different from the IKE identity.
2299 - Fixed the alignment of ModeConfig messages on 4-byte boundaries in the
2300 case where the attributes are not a multiple of 4 bytes (e.g. Cisco's
2303 - Fixed the interoperability of the socket_raw and socket_default
2306 - Added man page for strongswan.conf
2312 - Support of xfrm marks in IPsec SAs and IPsec policies introduced
2313 with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel. For details see the example scenarios
2314 ikev2/nat-two-rw-mark, ikev2/rw-nat-mark-in-out and ikev2/net2net-psk-dscp.
2316 - The PLUTO_MARK_IN and PLUTO_ESP_ENC environment variables can be used
2317 in a user-specific updown script to set marks on inbound ESP or
2320 - The openssl plugin now supports X.509 certificate and CRL functions.
2322 - OCSP/CRL checking in IKEv2 has been moved to the revocation plugin, enabled
2323 by default. Please update manual load directives in strongswan.conf.
2325 - RFC3779 ipAddrBlock constraint checking has been moved to the addrblock
2326 plugin, disabled by default. Enable it and update manual load directives
2327 in strongswan.conf, if required.
2329 - The pki utility supports CRL generation using the --signcrl command.
2331 - The ipsec pki --self, --issue and --req commands now support output in
2332 PEM format using the --outform pem option.
2334 - The major refactoring of the IKEv1 Mode Config functionality now allows
2335 the transport and handling of any Mode Config attribute.
2337 - The RADIUS proxy plugin eap-radius now supports multiple servers. Configured
2338 servers are chosen randomly, with the option to prefer a specific server.
2339 Non-responding servers are degraded by the selection process.
2341 - The ipsec pool tool manages arbitrary configuration attributes stored
2342 in an SQL database. ipsec pool --help gives the details.
2344 - The new eap-simaka-sql plugin acts as a backend for EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA,
2345 reading triplets/quintuplets from an SQL database.
2347 - The High Availability plugin now supports a HA enabled in-memory address
2348 pool and Node reintegration without IKE_SA rekeying. The latter allows
2349 clients without IKE_SA rekeying support to keep connected during
2350 reintegration. Additionally, many other issues have been fixed in the ha
2353 - Fixed a potential remote code execution vulnerability resulting from
2354 the misuse of snprintf(). The vulnerability is exploitable by
2355 unauthenticated users.
2361 - The IKEv2 High Availability plugin has been integrated. It provides
2362 load sharing and failover capabilities in a cluster of currently two nodes,
2363 based on an extend ClusterIP kernel module.
2364 The development of the High Availability functionality was sponsored by
2365 secunet Security Networks AG.
2367 - Added IKEv1 and IKEv2 configuration support for the AES-GMAC
2368 authentication-only ESP cipher. Our aes_gmac kernel patch or a Linux
2369 2.6.34 kernel is required to make AES-GMAC available via the XFRM
2372 - Added support for Diffie-Hellman groups 22, 23 and 24 to the gmp, gcrypt
2373 and openssl plugins, usable by both pluto and charon. The new proposal
2374 keywords are modp1024s160, modp2048s224 and modp2048s256. Thanks to Joy Latten
2375 from IBM for his contribution.
2377 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon supports RAM-based virtual IP pools using
2378 the rightsourceip directive with a subnet from which addresses
2381 - The ipsec pki --gen and --pub commands now allow the output of
2382 private and public keys in PEM format using the --outform pem
2383 command line option.
2385 - The new DHCP plugin queries virtual IP addresses for clients from a DHCP
2386 server using broadcasts, or a defined server using the
2387 charon.plugins.dhcp.server strongswan.conf option. DNS/WINS server information
2388 is additionally served to clients if the DHCP server provides such
2389 information. The plugin is used in ipsec.conf configurations having
2390 rightsourceip set to %dhcp.
2392 - A new plugin called farp fakes ARP responses for virtual IP addresses
2393 handed out to clients from the IKEv2 daemon charon. The plugin lets a
2394 road-warrior act as a client on the local LAN if it uses a virtual IP
2395 from the responders subnet, e.g. acquired using the DHCP plugin.
2397 - The existing IKEv2 socket implementations have been migrated to the
2398 socket-default and the socket-raw plugins. The new socket-dynamic plugin
2399 binds sockets dynamically to ports configured via the left-/rightikeport
2400 ipsec.conf connection parameters.
2402 - The android charon plugin stores received DNS server information as "net.dns"
2403 system properties, as used by the Android platform.
2409 - The IKEv2 daemon supports RFC 3779 IP address block constraints
2410 carried as a critical X.509v3 extension in the peer certificate.
2412 - The ipsec pool --add|del dns|nbns command manages DNS and NBNS name
2413 server entries that are sent via the IKEv1 Mode Config or IKEv2
2414 Configuration Payload to remote clients.
2416 - The Camellia cipher can be used as an IKEv1 encryption algorithm.
2418 - The IKEv1 and IKEV2 daemons now check certificate path length constraints.
2420 - The new ipsec.conf conn option "inactivity" closes a CHILD_SA if no traffic
2421 was sent or received within the given interval. To close the complete IKE_SA
2422 if its only CHILD_SA was inactive, set the global strongswan.conf option
2423 "charon.inactivity_close_ike" to yes.
2425 - More detailed IKEv2 EAP payload information in debug output
2427 - IKEv2 EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA share joint libsimaka library
2429 - Added required userland changes for proper SHA256 and SHA384/512 in ESP that
2430 will be introduced with Linux 2.6.33. The "sha256"/"sha2_256" keyword now
2431 configures the kernel with 128 bit truncation, not the non-standard 96
2432 bit truncation used by previous releases. To use the old 96 bit truncation
2433 scheme, the new "sha256_96" proposal keyword has been introduced.
2435 - Fixed IPComp in tunnel mode, stripping out the duplicated outer header. This
2436 change makes IPcomp tunnel mode connections incompatible with previous
2437 releases; disable compression on such tunnels.
2439 - Fixed BEET mode connections on recent kernels by installing SAs with
2440 appropriate traffic selectors, based on a patch by Michael Rossberg.
2442 - Using extensions (such as BEET mode) and crypto algorithms (such as twofish,
2443 serpent, sha256_96) allocated in the private use space now require that we
2444 know its meaning, i.e. we are talking to strongSwan. Use the new
2445 "charon.send_vendor_id" option in strongswan.conf to let the remote peer know
2448 - Experimental support for draft-eronen-ipsec-ikev2-eap-auth, where the
2449 responder omits public key authentication in favor of a mutual authentication
2450 method. To enable EAP-only authentication, set rightauth=eap on the responder
2451 to rely only on the MSK constructed AUTH payload. This not-yet standardized
2452 extension requires the strongSwan vendor ID introduced above.
2454 - The IKEv1 daemon ignores the Juniper SRX notification type 40001, thus
2455 allowing interoperability.
2461 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon can now use SQL-based address pools to deal out
2462 virtual IP addresses as a Mode Config server. The pool capability has been
2463 migrated from charon's sql plugin to a new attr-sql plugin which is loaded
2464 by libstrongswan and which can be used by both daemons either with a SQLite
2465 or MySQL database and the corresponding plugin.
2467 - Plugin names have been streamlined: EAP plugins now have a dash after eap
2468 (e.g. eap-sim), as it is used with the --enable-eap-sim ./configure option.
2469 Plugin configuration sections in strongswan.conf now use the same name as the
2470 plugin itself (i.e. with a dash). Make sure to update "load" directives and
2471 the affected plugin sections in existing strongswan.conf files.
2473 - The private/public key parsing and encoding has been split up into
2474 separate pkcs1, pgp, pem and dnskey plugins. The public key implementation
2475 plugins gmp, gcrypt and openssl can all make use of them.
2477 - The EAP-AKA plugin can use different backends for USIM/quintuplet
2478 calculations, very similar to the EAP-SIM plugin. The existing 3GPP2 software
2479 implementation has been migrated to a separate plugin.
2481 - The IKEv2 daemon charon gained basic PGP support. It can use locally installed
2482 peer certificates and can issue signatures based on RSA private keys.
2484 - The new 'ipsec pki' tool provides a set of commands to maintain a public
2485 key infrastructure. It currently supports operations to create RSA and ECDSA
2486 private/public keys, calculate fingerprints and issue or verify certificates.
2488 - Charon uses a monotonic time source for statistics and job queueing, behaving
2489 correctly if the system time changes (e.g. when using NTP).
2491 - In addition to time based rekeying, charon supports IPsec SA lifetimes based
2492 on processed volume or number of packets. They new ipsec.conf parameters
2493 'lifetime' (an alias to 'keylife'), 'lifebytes' and 'lifepackets' handle
2494 SA timeouts, while the parameters 'margintime' (an alias to rekeymargin),
2495 'marginbytes' and 'marginpackets' trigger the rekeying before a SA expires.
2496 The existing parameter 'rekeyfuzz' affects all margins.
2498 - If no CA/Gateway certificate is specified in the NetworkManager plugin,
2499 charon uses a set of trusted root certificates preinstalled by distributions.
2500 The directory containing CA certificates can be specified using the
2501 --with-nm-ca-dir=path configure option.
2503 - Fixed the encoding of the Email relative distinguished name in left|rightid
2506 - Fixed the broken parsing of PKCS#7 wrapped certificates by the pluto daemon.
2508 - Fixed smartcard-based authentication in the pluto daemon which was broken by
2509 the ECDSA support introduced with the 4.3.2 release.
2511 - A patch contributed by Heiko Hund fixes mixed IPv6 in IPv4 and vice versa
2512 tunnels established with the IKEv1 pluto daemon.
2514 - The pluto daemon now uses the libstrongswan x509 plugin for certificates and
2515 CRls and the struct id type was replaced by identification_t used by charon
2516 and the libstrongswan library.
2522 - IKEv2 charon daemon ported to FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Installation details can
2523 be found in the documentation.
2525 - ipsec statusall shows the number of bytes transmitted and received over
2526 ESP connections configured by the IKEv2 charon daemon.
2528 - The IKEv2 charon daemon supports include files in ipsec.secrets.
2534 - The configuration option --enable-integrity-test plus the strongswan.conf
2535 option libstrongswan.integrity_test = yes activate integrity tests
2536 of the IKE daemons charon and pluto, libstrongswan and all loaded
2537 plugins. Thus dynamic library misconfigurations and non-malicious file
2538 manipulations can be reliably detected.
2540 - The new default setting libstrongswan.ecp_x_coordinate_only=yes allows
2541 IKEv1 interoperability with MS Windows using the ECP DH groups 19 and 20.
2543 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the AES-CCM and AES-GCM ESP
2544 authenticated encryption algorithms.
2546 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports V4 OpenPGP keys.
2548 - The RDN parser vulnerability discovered by Orange Labs research team
2549 was not completely fixed in version 4.3.2. Some more modifications
2550 had to be applied to the asn1_length() function to make it robust.
2556 - The new gcrypt plugin provides symmetric cipher, hasher, RNG, Diffie-Hellman
2557 and RSA crypto primitives using the LGPL licensed GNU gcrypt library.
2559 - libstrongswan features an integrated crypto selftest framework for registered
2560 algorithms. The test-vector plugin provides a first set of test vectors and
2561 allows pluto and charon to rely on tested crypto algorithms.
2563 - pluto can now use all libstrongswan plugins with the exception of x509 and xcbc.
2564 Thanks to the openssl plugin, the ECP Diffie-Hellman groups 19, 20, 21, 25, and
2565 26 as well as ECDSA-256, ECDSA-384, and ECDSA-521 authentication can be used
2568 - Applying their fuzzing tool, the Orange Labs vulnerability research team found
2569 another two DoS vulnerabilities, one in the rather old ASN.1 parser of Relative
2570 Distinguished Names (RDNs) and a second one in the conversion of ASN.1 UTCTIME
2571 and GENERALIZEDTIME strings to a time_t value.
2577 - The nm plugin now passes DNS/NBNS server information to NetworkManager,
2578 allowing a gateway administrator to set DNS/NBNS configuration on clients
2581 - The nm plugin also accepts CA certificates for gateway authentication. If
2582 a CA certificate is configured, strongSwan uses the entered gateway address
2583 as its identity, requiring the gateways certificate to contain the same as
2584 subjectAltName. This allows a gateway administrator to deploy the same
2585 certificates to Windows 7 and NetworkManager clients.
2587 - The command ipsec purgeike deletes IKEv2 SAs that don't have a CHILD SA.
2588 The command ipsec down <conn>{n} deletes CHILD SA instance n of connection
2589 <conn> whereas ipsec down <conn>{*} deletes all CHILD SA instances.
2590 The command ipsec down <conn>[n] deletes IKE SA instance n of connection
2591 <conn> plus dependent CHILD SAs whereas ipsec down <conn>[*] deletes all
2592 IKE SA instances of connection <conn>.
2594 - Fixed a regression introduced in 4.3.0 where EAP authentication calculated
2595 the AUTH payload incorrectly. Further, the EAP-MSCHAPv2 MSK key derivation
2596 has been updated to be compatible with the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
2598 - Refactored installation of triggering policies. Routed policies are handled
2599 outside of IKE_SAs to keep them installed in any case. A tunnel gets
2600 established only once, even if initiation is delayed due network outages.
2602 - Improved the handling of multiple acquire signals triggered by the kernel.
2604 - Fixed two DoS vulnerabilities in the charon daemon that were discovered by
2605 fuzzing techniques: 1) Sending a malformed IKE_SA_INIT request leaved an
2606 incomplete state which caused a null pointer dereference if a subsequent
2607 CREATE_CHILD_SA request was sent. 2) Sending an IKE_AUTH request with either
2608 a missing TSi or TSr payload caused a null pointer dereference because the
2609 checks for TSi and TSr were interchanged. The IKEv2 fuzzer used was
2610 developed by the Orange Labs vulnerability research team. The tool was
2611 initially written by Gabriel Campana and is now maintained by Laurent Butti.
2613 - Added support for AES counter mode in ESP in IKEv2 using the proposal
2614 keywords aes128ctr, aes192ctr and aes256ctr.
2616 - Further progress in refactoring pluto: Use of the curl and ldap plugins
2617 for fetching crls and OCSP. Use of the random plugin to get keying material
2618 from /dev/random or /dev/urandom. Use of the openssl plugin as an alternative
2619 to the aes, des, sha1, sha2, and md5 plugins. The blowfish, twofish, and
2620 serpent encryption plugins are now optional and are not enabled by default.
2626 - Support for the IKEv2 Multiple Authentication Exchanges extension (RFC4739).
2627 Initiators and responders can use several authentication rounds (e.g. RSA
2628 followed by EAP) to authenticate. The new ipsec.conf leftauth/rightauth and
2629 leftauth2/rightauth2 parameters define own authentication rounds or setup
2630 constraints for the remote peer. See the ipsec.conf man page for more details.
2632 - If glibc printf hooks (register_printf_function) are not available,
2633 strongSwan can use the vstr string library to run on non-glibc systems.
2635 - The IKEv2 charon daemon can now configure the ESP CAMELLIA-CBC cipher
2636 (esp=camellia128|192|256).
2638 - Refactored the pluto and scepclient code to use basic functions (memory
2639 allocation, leak detective, chunk handling, printf_hooks, strongswan.conf
2640 attributes, ASN.1 parser, etc.) from the libstrongswan library.
2642 - Up to two DNS and WINS servers to be sent via IKEv1 ModeConfig can be
2643 configured in the pluto section of strongswan.conf.
2649 - The new server-side EAP RADIUS plugin (--enable-eap-radius)
2650 relays EAP messages to and from a RADIUS server. Successfully
2651 tested with with a freeradius server using EAP-MD5 and EAP-SIM.
2653 - A vulnerability in the Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706) code was found by
2654 Gerd v. Egidy <gerd.von.egidy@intra2net.com> of Intra2net AG affecting
2655 all Openswan and strongSwan releases. A malicious (or expired ISAKMP)
2656 R_U_THERE or R_U_THERE_ACK Dead Peer Detection packet can cause the
2657 pluto IKE daemon to crash and restart. No authentication or encryption
2658 is required to trigger this bug. One spoofed UDP packet can cause the
2659 pluto IKE daemon to restart and be unresponsive for a few seconds while
2660 restarting. This DPD null state vulnerability has been officially
2661 registered as CVE-2009-0790 and is fixed by this release.
2663 - ASN.1 to time_t conversion caused a time wrap-around for
2664 dates after Jan 18 03:14:07 UTC 2038 on 32-bit platforms.
2665 As a workaround such dates are set to the maximum representable
2666 time, i.e. Jan 19 03:14:07 UTC 2038.
2668 - Distinguished Names containing wildcards (*) are not sent in the
2669 IDr payload anymore.
2675 - Fixed a use-after-free bug in the DPD timeout section of the
2676 IKEv1 pluto daemon which sporadically caused a segfault.
2678 - Fixed a crash in the IKEv2 charon daemon occurring with
2679 mixed RAM-based and SQL-based virtual IP address pools.
2681 - Fixed ASN.1 parsing of algorithmIdentifier objects where the
2682 parameters field is optional.
2684 - Ported nm plugin to NetworkManager 7.1.
2690 - Support of the EAP-MSCHAPv2 protocol enabled by the option
2691 --enable-eap-mschapv2. Requires the MD4 hash algorithm enabled
2692 either by --enable-md4 or --enable-openssl.
2694 - Assignment of up to two DNS and up to two WINS servers to peers via
2695 the IKEv2 Configuration Payload (CP). The IPv4 or IPv6 nameserver
2696 addresses are defined in strongswan.conf.
2698 - The strongSwan applet for the Gnome NetworkManager is now built and
2699 distributed as a separate tarball under the name NetworkManager-strongswan.
2705 - Fixed ESP NULL encryption broken by the refactoring of keymat.c.
2706 Also introduced proper initialization and disposal of keying material.
2708 - Fixed the missing listing of connection definitions in ipsec statusall
2709 broken by an unfortunate local variable overload.
2715 - Several performance improvements to handle thousands of tunnels with almost
2716 linear upscaling. All relevant data structures have been replaced by faster
2717 counterparts with better lookup times.
2719 - Better parallelization to run charon on multiple cores. Due to improved
2720 resource locking and other optimizations the daemon can take full
2721 advantage of 16 or even more cores.
2723 - The load-tester plugin can use a NULL Diffie-Hellman group and simulate
2724 unique identities and certificates by signing peer certificates using a CA
2727 - The redesigned stroke in-memory IP pool handles leases. The "ipsec leases"
2728 command queries assigned leases.
2730 - Added support for smartcards in charon by using the ENGINE API provided by
2731 OpenSSL, based on patches by Michael Roßberg.
2733 - The Padlock plugin supports the hardware RNG found on VIA CPUs to provide a
2734 reliable source of randomness.
2739 - Flexible configuration of logging subsystem allowing to log to multiple
2740 syslog facilities or to files using fine-grained log levels for each target.
2742 - Load testing plugin to do stress testing of the IKEv2 daemon against self
2743 or another host. Found and fixed issues during tests in the multi-threaded
2744 use of the OpenSSL plugin.
2746 - Added profiling code to synchronization primitives to find bottlenecks if
2747 running on multiple cores. Found and fixed an issue where parts of the
2748 Diffie-Hellman calculation acquired an exclusive lock. This greatly improves
2749 parallelization to multiple cores.
2751 - updown script invocation has been separated into a plugin of its own to
2752 further slim down the daemon core.
2754 - Separated IKE_SA/CHILD_SA key derivation process into a closed system,
2755 allowing future implementations to use a secured environment in e.g. kernel
2758 - The kernel interface of charon has been modularized. XFRM NETLINK (default)
2759 and PFKEY (--enable-kernel-pfkey) interface plugins for the native IPsec
2760 stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel as well as a PFKEY interface for the KLIPS
2761 IPsec stack (--enable-kernel-klips) are provided.
2763 - Basic Mobile IPv6 support has been introduced, securing Binding Update
2764 messages as well as tunneled traffic between Mobile Node and Home Agent.
2765 The installpolicy=no option allows peaceful cooperation with a dominant
2766 mip6d daemon and the new type=transport_proxy implements the special MIPv6
2767 IPsec transport proxy mode where the IKEv2 daemon uses the Care-of-Address
2768 but the IPsec SA is set up for the Home Address.
2770 - Implemented migration of Mobile IPv6 connections using the KMADDRESS
2771 field contained in XFRM_MSG_MIGRATE messages sent by the mip6d daemon
2772 via the Linux 2.6.28 (or appropriately patched) kernel.
2778 - IKEv2 charon daemon supports authentication based on raw public keys
2779 stored in the SQL database backend. The ipsec listpubkeys command
2780 lists the available raw public keys via the stroke interface.
2782 - Several MOBIKE improvements: Detect changes in NAT mappings in DPD exchanges,
2783 handle events if kernel detects NAT mapping changes in UDP-encapsulated
2784 ESP packets (requires kernel patch), reuse old addresses in MOBIKE updates as
2785 long as possible and other fixes.
2787 - Fixed a bug in addr_in_subnet() which caused insertion of wrong source
2788 routes for destination subnets having netwmasks not being a multiple of 8 bits.
2789 Thanks go to Wolfgang Steudel, TU Ilmenau for reporting this bug.
2795 - Fixed a Denial-of-Service vulnerability where an IKE_SA_INIT message with
2796 a KE payload containing zeroes only can cause a crash of the IKEv2 charon
2797 daemon due to a NULL pointer returned by the mpz_export() function of the
2798 GNU Multiprecision Library (GMP). Thanks go to Mu Dynamics Research Labs
2799 for making us aware of this problem.
2801 - The new agent plugin provides a private key implementation on top of an
2804 - The NetworkManager plugin has been extended to support certificate client
2805 authentication using RSA keys loaded from a file or using ssh-agent.
2807 - Daemon capability dropping has been ported to libcap and must be enabled
2808 explicitly --with-capabilities=libcap. Future version will support the
2809 newer libcap2 library.
2811 - ipsec listalgs lists the IKEv2 cryptografic algorithms registered with the
2812 charon keying daemon.
2818 - A NetworkManager plugin allows GUI-based configuration of road-warrior
2819 clients in a simple way. It features X509 based gateway authentication
2820 and EAP client authentication, tunnel setup/teardown and storing passwords
2821 in the Gnome Keyring.
2823 - A new EAP-GTC plugin implements draft-sheffer-ikev2-gtc-00.txt and allows
2824 username/password authentication against any PAM service on the gateway.
2825 The new EAP method interacts nicely with the NetworkManager plugin and allows
2826 client authentication against e.g. LDAP.
2828 - Improved support for the EAP-Identity method. The new ipsec.conf eap_identity
2829 parameter defines an additional identity to pass to the server in EAP
2832 - The "ipsec statusall" command now lists CA restrictions, EAP
2833 authentication types and EAP identities.
2835 - Fixed two multithreading deadlocks occurring when starting up
2836 several hundred tunnels concurrently.
2838 - Fixed the --enable-integrity-test configure option which
2839 computes a SHA-1 checksum over the libstrongswan library.
2845 - Consistent logging of IKE and CHILD SAs at the audit (AUD) level.
2847 - Improved the performance of the SQL-based virtual IP address pool
2848 by introducing an additional addresses table. The leases table
2849 storing only history information has become optional and can be
2850 disabled by setting charon.plugins.sql.lease_history = no in
2853 - The XFRM_STATE_AF_UNSPEC flag added to xfrm.h allows IPv4-over-IPv6
2854 and IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnels with the 2.6.26 and later Linux kernels.
2856 - management of different virtual IP pools for different
2857 network interfaces have become possible.
2859 - fixed a bug which prevented the assignment of more than 256
2860 virtual IP addresses from a pool managed by an sql database.
2862 - fixed a bug which did not delete own IPCOMP SAs in the kernel.
2868 - Added statistics functions to ipsec pool --status and ipsec pool --leases
2869 and input validation checks to various ipsec pool commands.
2871 - ipsec statusall now lists all loaded charon plugins and displays
2872 the negotiated IKEv2 cipher suite proposals.
2874 - The openssl plugin supports the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman groups
2875 19, 20, 21, 25, and 26.
2877 - The openssl plugin supports ECDSA authentication using elliptic curve
2880 - Fixed a bug in stroke which caused multiple charon threads to close
2881 the file descriptors during packet transfers over the stroke socket.
2883 - ESP sequence numbers are now migrated in IPsec SA updates handled by
2884 MOBIKE. Works only with Linux kernels >= 2.6.17.
2890 - Fixed the strongswan.conf path configuration problem that occurred when
2891 --sysconfig was not set explicitly in ./configure.
2893 - Fixed a number of minor bugs that where discovered during the 4th
2894 IKEv2 interoperability workshop in San Antonio, TX.
2900 - Plugins for libstrongswan and charon can optionally be loaded according
2901 to a configuration in strongswan.conf. Most components provide a
2902 "load = " option followed by a space separated list of plugins to load.
2903 This allows e.g. the fallback from a hardware crypto accelerator to
2904 to software-based crypto plugins.
2906 - Charons SQL plugin has been extended by a virtual IP address pool.
2907 Configurations with a rightsourceip=%poolname setting query a SQLite or
2908 MySQL database for leases. The "ipsec pool" command helps in administrating
2909 the pool database. See ipsec pool --help for the available options
2911 - The Authenticated Encryption Algorithms AES-CCM-8/12/16 and AES-GCM-8/12/16
2912 for ESP are now supported starting with the Linux 2.6.25 kernel. The
2913 syntax is e.g. esp=aes128ccm12 or esp=aes256gcm16.
2919 - Support for "Hash and URL" encoded certificate payloads has been implemented
2920 in the IKEv2 daemon charon. Using the "certuribase" option of a CA section
2921 allows to assign a base URL to all certificates issued by the specified CA.
2922 The final URL is then built by concatenating that base and the hex encoded
2923 SHA1 hash of the DER encoded certificate. Note that this feature is disabled
2924 by default and must be enabled using the option "charon.hash_and_url".
2926 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports the "uniqueids" option to close multiple
2927 IKE_SAs with the same peer. The option value "keep" prefers existing
2928 connection setups over new ones, where the value "replace" replaces existing
2931 - The crypto factory in libstrongswan additionally supports random number
2932 generators, plugins may provide other sources of randomness. The default
2933 plugin reads raw random data from /dev/(u)random.
2935 - Extended the credential framework by a caching option to allow plugins
2936 persistent caching of fetched credentials. The "cachecrl" option has been
2939 - The new trustchain verification introduced in 4.2.0 has been parallelized.
2940 Threads fetching CRL or OCSP information no longer block other threads.
2942 - A new IKEv2 configuration attribute framework has been introduced allowing
2943 plugins to provide virtual IP addresses, and in the future, other
2944 configuration attribute services (e.g. DNS/WINS servers).
2946 - The stroke plugin has been extended to provide virtual IP addresses from
2947 a pool defined in ipsec.conf. The "rightsourceip" parameter now accepts
2948 address pools in CIDR notation (e.g. 10.1.1.0/24). The parameter also accepts
2949 the value "%poolname", where "poolname" identifies a pool provided by a
2952 - Fixed compilation on uClibc and a couple of other minor bugs.
2954 - Set DPD defaults in ipsec starter to dpd_delay=30s and dpd_timeout=150s.
2956 - The IKEv1 pluto daemon now supports the ESP encryption algorithm CAMELLIA
2957 with key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits, as well as the authentication
2958 algorithm AES_XCBC_MAC. Configuration example: esp=camellia192-aesxcbc.
2964 - libstrongswan has been modularized to attach crypto algorithms,
2965 credential implementations (keys, certificates) and fetchers dynamically
2966 through plugins. Existing code has been ported to plugins:
2967 - RSA/Diffie-Hellman implementation using the GNU Multi Precision library
2968 - X509 certificate system supporting CRLs, OCSP and attribute certificates
2969 - Multiple plugins providing crypto algorithms in software
2970 - CURL and OpenLDAP fetcher
2972 - libstrongswan gained a relational database API which uses pluggable database
2973 providers. Plugins for MySQL and SQLite are available.
2975 - The IKEv2 keying daemon charon is more extensible. Generic plugins may provide
2976 connection configuration, credentials and EAP methods or control the daemon.
2977 Existing code has been ported to plugins:
2978 - EAP-AKA, EAP-SIM, EAP-MD5 and EAP-Identity
2979 - stroke configuration, credential and control (compatible to pluto)
2980 - XML bases management protocol to control and query the daemon
2981 The following new plugins are available:
2982 - An experimental SQL configuration, credential and logging plugin on
2983 top of either MySQL or SQLite
2984 - A unit testing plugin to run tests at daemon startup
2986 - The authentication and credential framework in charon has been heavily
2987 refactored to support modular credential providers, proper
2988 CERTREQ/CERT payload exchanges and extensible authorization rules.
2990 - The framework of strongSwan Manager has evolved to the web application
2991 framework libfast (FastCGI Application Server w/ Templates) and is usable
2992 by other applications.
2998 - IKE rekeying in NAT situations did not inherit the NAT conditions
2999 to the rekeyed IKE_SA so that the UDP encapsulation was lost with
3000 the next CHILD_SA rekeying.
3002 - Wrong type definition of the next_payload variable in id_payload.c
3003 caused an INVALID_SYNTAX error on PowerPC platforms.
3005 - Implemented IKEv2 EAP-SIM server and client test modules that use
3006 triplets stored in a file. For details on the configuration see
3007 the scenario 'ikev2/rw-eap-sim-rsa'.
3013 - Fixed error in the ordering of the certinfo_t records in the ocsp cache that
3014 caused multiple entries of the same serial number to be created.
3016 - Implementation of a simple EAP-MD5 module which provides CHAP
3017 authentication. This may be interesting in conjunction with certificate
3018 based server authentication, as weak passwords can't be brute forced
3019 (in contradiction to traditional IKEv2 PSK).
3021 - A complete software based implementation of EAP-AKA, using algorithms
3022 specified in 3GPP2 (S.S0055). This implementation does not use an USIM,
3023 but reads the secrets from ipsec.secrets. Make sure to read eap_aka.h
3026 - Support for vendor specific EAP methods using Expanded EAP types. The
3027 interface to EAP modules has been slightly changed, so make sure to
3028 check the changes if you're already rolling your own modules.
3034 - The default _updown script now dynamically inserts and removes ip6tables
3035 firewall rules if leftfirewall=yes is set in IPv6 connections. New IPv6
3036 net-net and roadwarrior (PSK/RSA) scenarios for both IKEv1 and IKEV2 were
3039 - Implemented RFC4478 repeated authentication to force EAP/Virtual-IP clients
3040 to reestablish an IKE_SA within a given timeframe.
3042 - strongSwan Manager supports configuration listing, initiation and termination
3043 of IKE and CHILD_SAs.
3045 - Fixes and improvements to multithreading code.
3047 - IKEv2 plugins have been renamed to libcharon-* to avoid naming conflicts.
3048 Make sure to remove the old plugins in $libexecdir/ipsec, otherwise they get
3055 - Removed recursive pthread mutexes since uClibc doesn't support them.
3061 - In NAT traversal situations and multiple queued Quick Modes,
3062 those pending connections inserted by auto=start after the
3063 port floating from 500 to 4500 were erroneously deleted.
3065 - Added a "forceencaps" connection parameter to enforce UDP encapsulation
3066 to surmount restrictive firewalls. NAT detection payloads are faked to
3067 simulate a NAT situation and trick the other peer into NAT mode (IKEv2 only).
3069 - Preview of strongSwan Manager, a web based configuration and monitoring
3070 application. It uses a new XML control interface to query the IKEv2 daemon.
3072 - Experimental SQLite configuration backend which will provide the configuration
3073 interface for strongSwan Manager in future releases.
3075 - Further improvements to MOBIKE support.
3081 - Since some third party IKEv2 implementations run into
3082 problems with strongSwan announcing MOBIKE capability per
3083 default, MOBIKE can be disabled on a per-connection-basis
3084 using the mobike=no option. Whereas mobike=no disables the
3085 sending of the MOBIKE_SUPPORTED notification and the floating
3086 to UDP port 4500 with the IKE_AUTH request even if no NAT
3087 situation has been detected, strongSwan will still support
3088 MOBIKE acting as a responder.
3090 - the default ipsec routing table plus its corresponding priority
3091 used for inserting source routes has been changed from 100 to 220.
3092 It can be configured using the --with-ipsec-routing-table and
3093 --with-ipsec-routing-table-prio options.
3095 - the --enable-integrity-test configure option tests the
3096 integrity of the libstrongswan crypto code during the charon
3099 - the --disable-xauth-vid configure option disables the sending
3100 of the XAUTH vendor ID. This can be used as a workaround when
3101 interoperating with some Windows VPN clients that get into
3102 trouble upon reception of an XAUTH VID without eXtended
3103 AUTHentication having been configured.
3105 - ipsec stroke now supports the rereadsecrets, rereadaacerts,
3106 rereadacerts, and listacerts options.
3112 - If a DNS lookup failure occurs when resolving right=%<FQDN>
3113 or right=<FQDN> combined with rightallowany=yes then the
3114 connection is not updated by ipsec starter thus preventing
3115 the disruption of an active IPsec connection. Only if the DNS
3116 lookup successfully returns with a changed IP address the
3117 corresponding connection definition is updated.
3119 - Routes installed by the keying daemons are now in a separate
3120 routing table with the ID 100 to avoid conflicts with the main
3121 table. Route lookup for IKEv2 traffic is done in userspace to ignore
3122 routes installed for IPsec, as IKE traffic shouldn't get encapsulated.
3128 - The pluto IKEv1 daemon now exhibits the same behavior as its
3129 IKEv2 companion charon by inserting an explicit route via the
3130 _updown script only if a sourceip exists. This is admissible
3131 since routing through the IPsec tunnel is handled automatically
3132 by NETKEY's IPsec policies. As a consequence the left|rightnexthop
3133 parameter is not required any more.
3135 - The new IKEv1 parameter right|leftallowany parameters helps to handle
3136 the case where both peers possess dynamic IP addresses that are
3137 usually resolved using DynDNS or a similar service. The configuration
3142 can be used by the initiator to start up a connection to a peer
3143 by resolving peer.foo.bar into the currently allocated IP address.
3144 Thanks to the rightallowany flag the connection behaves later on
3149 so that the peer can rekey the connection as an initiator when his
3150 IP address changes. An alternative notation is
3154 which will implicitly set rightallowany=yes.
3156 - ipsec starter now fails more gracefully in the presence of parsing
3157 errors. Flawed ca and conn section are discarded and pluto is started
3158 if non-fatal errors only were encountered. If right=%peer.foo.bar
3159 cannot be resolved by DNS then right=%any will be used so that passive
3160 connections as a responder are still possible.
3162 - The new pkcs11initargs parameter that can be placed in the
3163 setup config section of /etc/ipsec.conf allows the definition
3164 of an argument string that is used with the PKCS#11 C_Initialize()
3165 function. This non-standard feature is required by the NSS softoken
3166 library. This patch was contributed by Robert Varga.
3168 - Fixed a bug in ipsec starter introduced by strongswan-2.8.5
3169 which caused a segmentation fault in the presence of unknown
3170 or misspelt keywords in ipsec.conf. This bug fix was contributed
3173 - Partial support for MOBIKE in IKEv2. The initiator acts on interface/
3174 address configuration changes and updates IKE and IPsec SAs dynamically.
3180 - IKEv2 peer configuration selection now can be based on a given
3181 certification authority using the rightca= statement.
3183 - IKEv2 authentication based on RSA signatures now can handle multiple
3184 certificates issued for a given peer ID. This allows a smooth transition
3185 in the case of a peer certificate renewal.
3187 - IKEv2: Support for requesting a specific virtual IP using leftsourceip on the
3188 client and returning requested virtual IPs using rightsourceip=%config
3189 on the server. If the server does not support configuration payloads, the
3190 client enforces its leftsourceip parameter.
3192 - The ./configure options --with-uid/--with-gid allow pluto and charon
3193 to drop their privileges to a minimum and change to an other UID/GID. This
3194 improves the systems security, as a possible intruder may only get the
3195 CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.
3197 - Further modularization of charon: Pluggable control interface and
3198 configuration backend modules provide extensibility. The control interface
3199 for stroke is included, and further interfaces using DBUS (NetworkManager)
3200 or XML are on the way. A backend for storing configurations in the daemon
3201 is provided and more advanced backends (using e.g. a database) are trivial
3204 - Fixed a compilation failure in libfreeswan occurring with Linux kernel
3211 - Support for an additional Diffie-Hellman exchange when creating/rekeying
3212 a CHILD_SA in IKEv2 (PFS). PFS is enabled when the proposal contains a
3213 DH group (e.g. "esp=aes128-sha1-modp1536"). Further, DH group negotiation
3214 is implemented properly for rekeying.
3216 - Support for the AES-XCBC-96 MAC algorithm for IPsec SAs when using IKEv2
3217 (requires linux >= 2.6.20). It is enabled using e.g. "esp=aes256-aesxcbc".
3219 - Working IPv4-in-IPv6 and IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels for linux >= 2.6.21.
3221 - Added support for EAP modules which do not establish an MSK.
3223 - Removed the dependencies from the /usr/include/linux/ headers by
3224 including xfrm.h, ipsec.h, and pfkeyv2.h in the distribution.
3226 - crlNumber is now listed by ipsec listcrls
3228 - The xauth_modules.verify_secret() function now passes the
3235 - Server side cookie support. If to may IKE_SAs are in CONNECTING state,
3236 cookies are enabled and protect against DoS attacks with faked source
3237 addresses. Number of IKE_SAs in CONNECTING state is also limited per
3238 peer address to avoid resource exhaustion. IKE_SA_INIT messages are
3239 compared to properly detect retransmissions and incoming retransmits are
3240 detected even if the IKE_SA is blocked (e.g. doing OCSP fetches).
3242 - The IKEv2 daemon charon now supports dynamic http- and ldap-based CRL
3243 fetching enabled by crlcheckinterval > 0 and caching fetched CRLs
3244 enabled by cachecrls=yes.
3246 - Added the configuration options --enable-nat-transport which enables
3247 the potentially insecure NAT traversal for IPsec transport mode and
3248 --disable-vendor-id which disables the sending of the strongSwan
3251 - Fixed a long-standing bug in the pluto IKEv1 daemon which caused
3252 a segmentation fault if a malformed payload was detected in the
3253 IKE MR2 message and pluto tried to send an encrypted notification
3256 - Added the NATT_IETF_02_N Vendor ID in order to support IKEv1 connections
3257 with Windows 2003 Server which uses a wrong VID hash.
3263 - Support of SHA2_384 hash function for protecting IKEv1
3264 negotiations and support of SHA2 signatures in X.509 certificates.
3266 - Fixed a serious bug in the computation of the SHA2-512 HMAC
3267 function. Introduced automatic self-test of all IKEv1 hash
3268 and hmac functions during pluto startup. Failure of a self-test
3269 currently issues a warning only but does not exit pluto [yet].
3271 - Support for SHA2-256/384/512 PRF and HMAC functions in IKEv2.
3273 - Full support of CA information sections. ipsec listcainfos
3274 now shows all collected crlDistributionPoints and OCSP
3277 - Support of the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for IKEv2.
3278 This feature requires the HTTP fetching capabilities of the libcurl
3279 library which must be enabled by setting the --enable-http configure
3282 - Refactored core of the IKEv2 message processing code, allowing better
3283 code reuse and separation.
3285 - Virtual IP support in IKEv2 using INTERNAL_IP4/6_ADDRESS configuration
3286 payload. Additionally, the INTERNAL_IP4/6_DNS attribute is interpreted
3287 by the requestor and installed in a resolv.conf file.
3289 - The IKEv2 daemon charon installs a route for each IPsec policy to use
3290 the correct source address even if an application does not explicitly
3293 - Integrated the EAP framework into charon which loads pluggable EAP library
3294 modules. The ipsec.conf parameter authby=eap initiates EAP authentication
3295 on the client side, while the "eap" parameter on the server side defines
3296 the EAP method to use for client authentication.
3297 A generic client side EAP-Identity module and an EAP-SIM authentication
3298 module using a third party card reader implementation are included.
3300 - Added client side support for cookies.
3302 - Integrated the fixes done at the IKEv2 interoperability bakeoff, including
3303 strict payload order, correct INVALID_KE_PAYLOAD rejection and other minor
3304 fixes to enhance interoperability with other implementations.
3310 - strongSwan now interoperates with the NCP Secure Entry Client,
3311 the Shrew Soft VPN Client, and the Cisco VPN client, doing both
3312 XAUTH and Mode Config.
3314 - UNITY attributes are now recognized and UNITY_BANNER is set
3315 to a default string.
3321 - IKEv1: Support for extended authentication (XAUTH) in combination
3322 with ISAKMP Main Mode RSA or PSK authentication. Both client and
3323 server side were implemented. Handling of user credentials can
3324 be done by a run-time loadable XAUTH module. By default user
3325 credentials are stored in ipsec.secrets.
3327 - IKEv2: Support for reauthentication when rekeying
3329 - IKEv2: Support for transport mode
3331 - fixed a lot of bugs related to byte order
3333 - various other bugfixes
3339 - IKEv1: Implementation of ModeConfig push mode via the new connection
3340 keyword modeconfig=push allows interoperability with Cisco VPN gateways.
3342 - IKEv1: The command ipsec statusall now shows "DPD active" for all
3343 ISAKMP SAs that are under active Dead Peer Detection control.
3345 - IKEv2: Charon's logging and debugging framework has been completely rewritten.
3346 Instead of logger, special printf() functions are used to directly
3347 print objects like hosts (%H) identifications (%D), certificates (%Q),
3348 etc. The number of debugging levels have been reduced to:
3350 0 (audit), 1 (control), 2 (controlmore), 3 (raw), 4 (private)
3352 The debugging levels can either be specified statically in ipsec.conf as
3355 charondebug="lib 1, cfg 3, net 2"
3357 or changed at runtime via stroke as
3359 ipsec stroke loglevel cfg 2
3365 - Implemented full support for IPv6-in-IPv6 tunnels.
3367 - Added configuration options for dead peer detection in IKEv2. dpd_action
3368 types "clear", "hold" and "restart" are supported. The dpd_timeout
3369 value is not used, as the normal retransmission policy applies to
3370 detect dead peers. The dpd_delay parameter enables sending of empty
3371 informational message to detect dead peers in case of inactivity.
3373 - Added support for preshared keys in IKEv2. PSK keys configured in
3374 ipsec.secrets are loaded. The authby parameter specifies the authentication
3375 method to authenticate ourself, the other peer may use PSK or RSA.
3377 - Changed retransmission policy to respect the keyingtries parameter.
3379 - Added private key decryption. PEM keys encrypted with AES-128/192/256
3380 or 3DES are supported.
3382 - Implemented DES/3DES algorithms in libstrongswan. 3DES can be used to
3383 encrypt IKE traffic.
3385 - Implemented SHA-256/384/512 in libstrongswan, allows usage of certificates
3386 signed with such a hash algorithm.
3388 - Added initial support for updown scripts. The actions up-host/client and
3389 down-host/client are executed. The leftfirewall=yes parameter
3390 uses the default updown script to insert dynamic firewall rules, a custom
3391 updown script may be specified with the leftupdown parameter.
3397 - Added support for the auto=route ipsec.conf parameter and the
3398 ipsec route/unroute commands for IKEv2. This allows to set up IKE_SAs and
3399 CHILD_SAs dynamically on demand when traffic is detected by the
3402 - Added support for rekeying IKE_SAs in IKEv2 using the ikelifetime parameter.
3403 As specified in IKEv2, no reauthentication is done (unlike in IKEv1), only
3404 new keys are generated using perfect forward secrecy. An optional flag
3405 which enforces reauthentication will be implemented later.
3407 - "sha" and "sha1" are now treated as synonyms in the ike= and esp=
3408 algorithm configuration statements.
3414 - Full X.509 certificate trust chain verification has been implemented.
3415 End entity certificates can be exchanged via CERT payloads. The current
3416 default is leftsendcert=always, since CERTREQ payloads are not supported
3417 yet. Optional CRLs must be imported locally into /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
3419 - Added support for leftprotoport/rightprotoport parameters in IKEv2. IKEv2
3420 would offer more possibilities for traffic selection, but the Linux kernel
3421 currently does not support it. That's why we stick with these simple
3422 ipsec.conf rules for now.
3424 - Added Dead Peer Detection (DPD) which checks liveliness of remote peer if no
3425 IKE or ESP traffic is received. DPD is currently hardcoded (dpdaction=clear,
3428 - Initial NAT traversal support in IKEv2. Charon includes NAT detection
3429 notify payloads to detect NAT routers between the peers. It switches
3430 to port 4500, uses UDP encapsulated ESP packets, handles peer address
3431 changes gracefully and sends keep alive message periodically.
3433 - Reimplemented IKE_SA state machine for charon, which allows simultaneous
3434 rekeying, more shared code, cleaner design, proper retransmission
3435 and a more extensible code base.
3437 - The mixed PSK/RSA roadwarrior detection capability introduced by the
3438 strongswan-2.7.0 release necessitated the pre-parsing of the IKE proposal
3439 payloads by the responder right before any defined IKE Main Mode state had
3440 been established. Although any form of bad proposal syntax was being correctly
3441 detected by the payload parser, the subsequent error handler didn't check
3442 the state pointer before logging current state information, causing an
3443 immediate crash of the pluto keying daemon due to a NULL pointer.
3449 - Added algorithm selection to charon: New default algorithms for
3450 ike=aes128-sha-modp2048, as both daemons support it. The default
3451 for IPsec SAs is now esp=aes128-sha,3des-md5. charon handles
3452 the ike/esp parameter the same way as pluto. As this syntax does
3453 not allow specification of a pseudo random function, the same
3454 algorithm as for integrity is used (currently sha/md5). Supported
3456 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256
3457 Integrity/PRF: md5, sha (using hmac)
3458 DH-Groups: modp768, 1024, 1536, 2048, 4096, 8192
3460 Encryption: aes128, aes192, aes256, 3des, blowfish128,
3461 blowfish192, blowfish256
3462 Integrity: md5, sha1
3463 More IKE encryption algorithms will come after porting libcrypto into
3466 - initial support for rekeying CHILD_SAs using IKEv2. Currently no
3467 perfect forward secrecy is used. The rekeying parameters rekey,
3468 rekeymargin, rekeyfuzz and keylife from ipsec.conf are now supported
3469 when using IKEv2. WARNING: charon currently is unable to handle
3470 simultaneous rekeying. To avoid such a situation, use a large
3471 rekeyfuzz, or even better, set rekey=no on one peer.
3473 - support for host2host, net2net, host2net (roadwarrior) tunnels
3474 using predefined RSA certificates (see uml scenarios for
3475 configuration examples).
3477 - new build environment featuring autotools. Features such
3478 as HTTP, LDAP and smartcard support may be enabled using
3479 the ./configure script. Changing install directories
3480 is possible, too. See ./configure --help for more details.
3482 - better integration of charon with ipsec starter, which allows
3483 (almost) transparent operation with both daemons. charon
3484 handles ipsec commands up, down, status, statusall, listall,
3485 listcerts and allows proper load, reload and delete of connections
3492 - initial support of the IKEv2 protocol. Connections in
3493 ipsec.conf designated by keyexchange=ikev2 are negotiated
3494 by the new IKEv2 charon keying daemon whereas those marked
3495 by keyexchange=ikev1 or the default keyexchange=ike are
3496 handled thy the IKEv1 pluto keying daemon. Currently only
3497 a limited subset of functions are available with IKEv2
3498 (Default AES encryption, authentication based on locally
3499 imported X.509 certificates, unencrypted private RSA keys
3500 in PKCS#1 file format, limited functionality of the ipsec
3507 - the dynamic iptables rules from the _updown_x509 template
3508 for KLIPS and the _updown_policy template for NETKEY have
3509 been merged into the default _updown script. The existing
3510 left|rightfirewall keyword causes the automatic insertion
3511 and deletion of ACCEPT rules for tunneled traffic upon
3512 the successful setup and teardown of an IPsec SA, respectively.
3513 left|rightfirewall can be used with KLIPS under any Linux 2.4
3514 kernel or with NETKEY under a Linux kernel version >= 2.6.16
3515 in conjunction with iptables >= 1.3.5. For NETKEY under a Linux
3516 kernel version < 2.6.16 which does not support IPsec policy
3517 matching yet, please continue to use a copy of the _updown_espmark
3518 template loaded via the left|rightupdown keyword.
3520 - a new left|righthostaccess keyword has been introduced which
3521 can be used in conjunction with left|rightfirewall and the
3522 default _updown script. By default leftfirewall=yes inserts
3523 a bi-directional iptables FORWARD rule for a local client network
3524 with a netmask different from 255.255.255.255 (single host).
3525 This does not allow to access the VPN gateway host via its
3526 internal network interface which is part of the client subnet
3527 because an iptables INPUT and OUTPUT rule would be required.
3528 lefthostaccess=yes will cause this additional ACCEPT rules to
3531 - mixed PSK|RSA roadwarriors are now supported. The ISAKMP proposal
3532 payload is preparsed in order to find out whether the roadwarrior
3533 requests PSK or RSA so that a matching connection candidate can
3540 - the new _updown_policy template allows ipsec policy based
3541 iptables firewall rules. Required are iptables version
3542 >= 1.3.5 and linux kernel >= 2.6.16. This script obsoletes
3543 the _updown_espmark template, so that no INPUT mangle rules
3544 are required any more.
3546 - added support of DPD restart mode
3548 - ipsec starter now allows the use of wildcards in include
3549 statements as e.g. in "include /etc/my_ipsec/*.conf".
3550 Patch courtesy of Matthias Haas.
3552 - the Netscape OID 'employeeNumber' is now recognized and can be
3553 used as a Relative Distinguished Name in certificates.
3559 - /etc/init.d/ipsec or /etc/rc.d/ipsec is now a copy of the ipsec
3560 command and not of ipsec setup any more.
3562 - ipsec starter now supports AH authentication in conjunction with
3563 ESP encryption. AH authentication is configured in ipsec.conf
3564 via the auth=ah parameter.
3566 - The command ipsec scencrypt|scdecrypt <args> is now an alias for
3567 ipsec whack --scencrypt|scdecrypt <args>.
3569 - get_sa_info() now determines for the native netkey IPsec stack
3570 the exact time of the last use of an active eroute. This information
3571 is used by the Dead Peer Detection algorithm and is also displayed by
3572 the ipsec status command.
3578 - running under the native Linux 2.6 IPsec stack, the function
3579 get_sa_info() is called by ipsec auto --status to display the current
3580 number of transmitted bytes per IPsec SA.
3582 - get_sa_info() is also used by the Dead Peer Detection process to detect
3583 recent ESP activity. If ESP traffic was received from the peer within
3584 the last dpd_delay interval then no R_Y_THERE notification must be sent.
3586 - strongSwan now supports the Relative Distinguished Name "unstructuredName"
3587 in ID_DER_ASN1_DN identities. The following notations are possible:
3589 rightid="unstructuredName=John Doe"
3590 rightid="UN=John Doe"
3592 - fixed a long-standing bug which caused PSK-based roadwarrior connections
3593 to segfault in the function id.c:same_id() called by keys.c:get_secret()
3594 if an FQDN, USER_FQDN, or Key ID was defined, as in the following example.
3601 - the ipsec command now supports most ipsec auto commands (e.g. ipsec listall).
3603 - ipsec starter didn't set host_addr and client.addr ports in whack msg.
3605 - in order to guarantee backwards-compatibility with the script-based
3606 auto function (e.g. auto --replace), the ipsec starter scripts stores
3607 the defaultroute information in the temporary file /var/run/ipsec.info.
3609 - The compile-time option USE_XAUTH_VID enables the sending of the XAUTH
3610 Vendor ID which is expected by Cisco PIX 7 boxes that act as IKE Mode Config
3613 - the ipsec starter now also recognizes the parameters authby=never and
3614 type=passthrough|pass|drop|reject.
3620 - ipsec starter now supports the also parameter which allows
3621 a modular structure of the connection definitions. Thus
3622 "ipsec start" is now ready to replace "ipsec setup".
3628 - Mathieu Lafon's popular ipsec starter tool has been added to the
3629 strongSwan distribution. Many thanks go to Stephan Scholz from astaro
3630 for his integration work. ipsec starter is a C program which is going
3631 to replace the various shell and awk starter scripts (setup, _plutoload,
3632 _plutostart, _realsetup, _startklips, _confread, and auto). Since
3633 ipsec.conf is now parsed only once, the starting of multiple tunnels is
3634 accelerated tremendously.
3636 - Added support of %defaultroute to the ipsec starter. If the IP address
3637 changes, a HUP signal to the ipsec starter will automatically
3638 reload pluto's connections.
3640 - moved most compile time configurations from pluto/Makefile to
3641 Makefile.inc by defining the options USE_LIBCURL, USE_LDAP,
3642 USE_SMARTCARD, and USE_NAT_TRAVERSAL_TRANSPORT_MODE.
3644 - removed the ipsec verify and ipsec newhostkey commands
3646 - fixed some 64-bit issues in formatted print statements
3648 - The scepclient functionality implementing the Simple Certificate
3649 Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) is nearly complete but hasn't been
3656 - CA certificates are now automatically loaded from a smartcard
3657 or USB crypto token and appear in the ipsec auto --listcacerts
3664 - when using "ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>" with a PKCS#11
3665 library that does not support the C_Encrypt() Cryptoki
3666 function (e.g. OpenSC), the RSA encryption is done in
3667 software using the public key fetched from the smartcard.
3669 - The scepclient function now allows to define the
3670 validity of a self-signed certificate using the --days,
3671 --startdate, and --enddate options. The default validity
3672 has been changed from one year to five years.
3678 - the config setup parameter pkcs11proxy=yes opens pluto's PKCS#11
3679 interface to other applications for RSA encryption and decryption
3680 via the whack interface. Notation:
3682 ipsec whack --scencrypt <data>
3683 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
3684 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
3687 ipsec whack --scdecrypt <data>
3688 [--inbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
3689 [--outbase 16|hex|64|base64|256|text|ascii]
3692 The default setting for inbase and outbase is hex.
3694 The new proxy interface can be used for securing symmetric
3695 encryption keys required by the cryptoloop or dm-crypt
3696 disk encryption schemes, especially in the case when
3697 pkcs11keepstate=yes causes pluto to lock the pkcs11 slot
3700 - if the file /etc/ipsec.secrets is lacking during the startup of
3701 pluto then the root-readable file /etc/ipsec.d/private/myKey.der
3702 containing a 2048 bit RSA private key and a matching self-signed
3703 certificate stored in the file /etc/ipsec.d/certs/selfCert.der
3704 is automatically generated by calling the function
3706 ipsec scepclient --out pkcs1 --out cert-self
3708 scepclient was written by Jan Hutter and Martin Willi, students
3709 at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, Switzerland.
3715 - the current extension of the PKCS#7 framework introduced
3716 a parsing error in PKCS#7 wrapped X.509 certificates that are
3717 e.g. transmitted by Windows XP when multi-level CAs are used.
3718 the parsing syntax has been fixed.
3720 - added a patch by Gerald Richter which tolerates multiple occurrences
3721 of the ipsec0 interface when using KLIPS.
3727 - with gawk-3.1.4 the word "default2 has become a protected
3728 keyword for use in switch statements and cannot be used any
3729 more in the strongSwan scripts. This problem has been
3730 solved by renaming "default" to "defaults" and "setdefault"
3731 in the scripts _confread and auto, respectively.
3733 - introduced the parameter leftsendcert with the values
3735 always|yes (the default, always send a cert)
3736 ifasked (send the cert only upon a cert request)
3737 never|no (never send a cert, used for raw RSA keys and
3740 - fixed the initialization of the ESP key length to a default of
3741 128 bits in the case that the peer does not send a key length
3742 attribute for AES encryption.
3744 - applied Herbert Xu's uniqueIDs patch
3746 - applied Herbert Xu's CLOEXEC patches
3752 - CRLs can now be cached also in the case when the issuer's
3753 certificate does not contain a subjectKeyIdentifier field.
3754 In that case the subjectKeyIdentifier is computed by pluto as the
3755 160 bit SHA-1 hash of the issuer's public key in compliance
3756 with section 4.2.1.2 of RFC 3280.
3758 - Fixed a bug introduced by strongswan-2.5.1 which eliminated
3759 not only multiple Quick Modes of a given connection but also
3760 multiple connections between two security gateways.
3766 - Under the native IPsec of the Linux 2.6 kernel, a %trap eroute
3767 installed either by setting auto=route in ipsec.conf or by
3768 a connection put into hold, generates an XFRM_ACQUIRE event
3769 for each packet that wants to use the not-yet existing
3770 tunnel. Up to now each XFRM_ACQUIRE event led to an entry in
3771 the Quick Mode queue, causing multiple IPsec SA to be
3772 established in rapid succession. Starting with strongswan-2.5.1
3773 only a single IPsec SA is established per host-pair connection.
3775 - Right after loading the PKCS#11 module, all smartcard slots are
3776 searched for certificates. The result can be viewed using
3779 ipsec auto --listcards
3781 The certificate objects found in the slots are numbered
3782 starting with #1, #2, etc. This position number can be used to address
3783 certificates (leftcert=%smartcard) and keys (: PIN %smartcard)
3784 in ipsec.conf and ipsec.secrets, respectively:
3786 %smartcard (selects object #1)
3787 %smartcard#1 (selects object #1)
3788 %smartcard#3 (selects object #3)
3790 As an alternative the existing retrieval scheme can be used:
3792 %smartcard:45 (selects object with id=45)
3793 %smartcard0 (selects first object in slot 0)
3794 %smartcard4:45 (selects object in slot 4 with id=45)
3796 - Depending on the settings of CKA_SIGN and CKA_DECRYPT
3797 private key flags either C_Sign() or C_Decrypt() is used
3798 to generate a signature.
3800 - The output buffer length parameter siglen in C_Sign()
3801 is now initialized to the actual size of the output
3802 buffer prior to the function call. This fixes the
3803 CKR_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL error that could occur when using
3804 the OpenSC PKCS#11 module.
3806 - Changed the initialization of the PKCS#11 CK_MECHANISM in
3807 C_SignInit() to mech = { CKM_RSA_PKCS, NULL_PTR, 0 }.
3809 - Refactored the RSA public/private key code and transferred it
3810 from keys.c to the new pkcs1.c file as a preparatory step
3811 towards the release of the SCEP client.
3817 - The loading of a PKCS#11 smartcard library module during
3818 runtime does not require OpenSC library functions any more
3819 because the corresponding code has been integrated into
3820 smartcard.c. Also the RSAREF pkcs11 header files have been
3821 included in a newly created pluto/rsaref directory so that
3822 no external include path has to be defined any longer.
3824 - A long-awaited feature has been implemented at last:
3825 The local caching of CRLs fetched via HTTP or LDAP, activated
3826 by the parameter cachecrls=yes in the config setup section
3827 of ipsec.conf. The dynamically fetched CRLs are stored under
3828 a unique file name containing the issuer's subjectKeyID
3829 in /etc/ipsec.d/crls.
3831 - Applied a one-line patch courtesy of Michael Richardson
3832 from the Openswan project which fixes the kernel-oops
3833 in KLIPS when an snmp daemon is running on the same box.
3839 - Eliminated null length CRL distribution point strings.
3841 - Fixed a trust path evaluation bug introduced with 2.4.3
3847 - Improved the joint OCSP / CRL revocation policy.
3848 OCSP responses have precedence over CRL entries.
3850 - Introduced support of CRLv2 reason codes.
3852 - Fixed a bug with key-pad equipped readers which caused
3853 pluto to prompt for the pin via the console when the first
3854 occasion to enter the pin via the key-pad was missed.
3856 - When pluto is built with LDAP_V3 enabled, the library
3857 liblber required by newer versions of openldap is now
3864 - Added the _updown_espmark template which requires all
3865 incoming ESP traffic to be marked with a default mark
3868 - Introduced the pkcs11keepstate parameter in the config setup
3869 section of ipsec.conf. With pkcs11keepstate=yes the PKCS#11
3870 session and login states are kept as long as possible during
3871 the lifetime of pluto. This means that a PIN entry via a key
3872 pad has to be done only once.
3874 - Introduced the pkcs11module parameter in the config setup
3875 section of ipsec.conf which specifies the PKCS#11 module
3876 to be used with smart cards. Example:
3878 pkcs11module=/usr/lib/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.lo
3880 - Added support of smartcard readers equipped with a PIN pad.
3882 - Added patch by Jay Pfeifer which detects when netkey
3883 modules have been statically built into the Linux 2.6 kernel.
3885 - Added two patches by Herbert Xu. The first uses ip xfrm
3886 instead of setkey to flush the IPsec policy database. The
3887 second sets the optional flag in inbound IPComp SAs only.
3889 - Applied Ulrich Weber's patch which fixes an interoperability
3890 problem between native IPsec and KLIPS systems caused by
3891 setting the replay window to 32 instead of 0 for ipcomp.
3897 - Fixed a bug which caused an unwanted Mode Config request
3898 to be initiated in the case where "right" was used to denote
3899 the local side in ipsec.conf and "left" the remote side,
3900 contrary to the recommendation that "right" be remote and
3907 - updated Vendor ID to strongSwan-2.4.0
3909 - updated copyright statement to include David Buechi and
3916 - strongSwan now communicates with attached smartcards and
3917 USB crypto tokens via the standardized PKCS #11 interface.
3918 By default the OpenSC library from www.opensc.org is used
3919 but any other PKCS#11 library could be dynamically linked.
3920 strongSwan's PKCS#11 API was implemented by David Buechi
3921 and Michael Meier, both graduates of the Zurich University
3922 of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland.
3924 - When a %trap eroute is triggered by an outgoing IP packet
3925 then the native IPsec stack of the Linux 2.6 kernel [often/
3926 always?] returns an XFRM_ACQUIRE message with an undefined
3927 protocol family field and the connection setup fails.
3928 As a workaround IPv4 (AF_INET) is now assumed.
3930 - the results of the UML test scenarios are now enhanced
3931 with block diagrams of the virtual network topology used
3932 in a particular test.
3938 - fixed IV used to decrypt informational messages.
3939 This bug was introduced with Mode Config functionality.
3941 - fixed NCP Vendor ID.
3943 - undid one of Ulrich Weber's maximum udp size patches
3944 because it caused a segmentation fault with NAT-ed
3947 - added UML scenarios wildcards and attr-cert which
3948 demonstrate the implementation of IPsec policies based
3949 on wildcard parameters contained in Distinguished Names and
3950 on X.509 attribute certificates, respectively.
3956 - Added basic Mode Config functionality
3958 - Added Mathieu Lafon's patch which upgrades the status of
3959 the NAT-Traversal implementation to RFC 3947.
3961 - The _startklips script now also loads the xfrm4_tunnel
3964 - Added Ulrich Weber's netlink replay window size and
3965 maximum udp size patches.
3967 - UML testing now uses the Linux 2.6.10 UML kernel by default.
3973 - Eric Marchionni and Patrik Rayo, both recent graduates from
3974 the Zuercher Hochschule Winterthur in Switzerland, created a
3975 User-Mode-Linux test setup for strongSwan. For more details
3976 please read the INSTALL and README documents in the testing
3979 - Full support of group attributes based on X.509 attribute
3980 certificates. Attribute certificates can be generated
3981 using the openac facility. For more details see
3985 The group attributes can be used in connection definitions
3986 in order to give IPsec access to specific user groups.
3987 This is done with the new parameter left|rightgroups as in
3989 rightgroups="Research, Sales"
3991 giving access to users possessing the group attributes
3992 Research or Sales, only.
3994 - In Quick Mode clients with subnet mask /32 are now
3995 coded as IP_V4_ADDRESS or IP_V6_ADDRESS. This should
3996 fix rekeying problems with the SafeNet/SoftRemote and NCP
3997 Secure Entry Clients.
3999 - Changed the defaults of the ikelifetime and keylife parameters
4000 to 3h and 1h, respectively. The maximum allowable values are
4001 now both set to 24 h.
4003 - Suppressed notification wars between two IPsec peers that
4004 could e.g. be triggered by incorrect ISAKMP encryption.
4006 - Public RSA keys can now have identical IDs if either the
4007 issuing CA or the serial number is different. The serial
4008 number of a certificate is now shown by the command
4010 ipsec auto --listpubkeys
4016 - Added Tuomo Soini's sourceip feature which allows a strongSwan
4017 roadwarrior to use a fixed Virtual IP (see README section 2.6)
4018 and reduces the well-known four tunnel case on VPN gateways to
4019 a single tunnel definition (see README section 2.4).
4021 - Fixed a bug occurring with NAT-Traversal enabled when the responder
4022 suddenly turns initiator and the initiator cannot find a matching
4023 connection because of the floated IKE port 4500.
4025 - Removed misleading ipsec verify command from barf.
4027 - Running under the native IP stack, ipsec --version now shows
4028 the Linux kernel version (courtesy to the Openswan project).
4034 - Introduced the ipsec auto --listalgs monitoring command which lists
4035 all currently registered IKE and ESP algorithms.
4037 - Fixed a bug in the ESP algorithm selection occurring when the strict flag
4038 is set and the first proposed transform does not match.
4040 - Fixed another deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex,
4041 occurring when a smartcard is present.
4043 - Prevented that a superseded Phase1 state can trigger a DPD_TIMEOUT event.
4045 - Fixed the printing of the notification names (null)
4047 - Applied another of Herbert Xu's Netlink patches.
4053 - Support of Dead Peer Detection. The connection parameter
4055 dpdaction=clear|hold
4057 activates DPD for the given connection.
4059 - The default Opportunistic Encryption (OE) policy groups are not
4060 automatically included anymore. Those wishing to activate OE can include
4061 the policy group with the following statement in ipsec.conf:
4063 include /etc/ipsec.d/examples/oe.conf
4065 The default for [right|left]rsasigkey is now set to %cert.
4067 - strongSwan now has a Vendor ID of its own which can be activated
4068 using the compile option VENDORID
4070 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch which sets the compression algorithm correctly.
4072 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch fixing an ESPINUDP problem
4074 - Applied Herbert Xu's patch setting source/destination port numbers.
4076 - Reapplied one of Herbert Xu's NAT-Traversal patches which got
4077 lost during the migration from SuperFreeS/WAN.
4079 - Fixed a deadlock in the use of the lock_certs_and_keys() mutex.
4081 - Fixed the unsharing of alg parameters when instantiating group
4088 - Thomas Walpuski made me aware of a potential DoS attack via
4089 a PKCS#7-wrapped certificate bundle which could overwrite valid CA
4090 certificates in Pluto's authority certificate store. This vulnerability
4091 was fixed by establishing trust in CA candidate certificates up to a
4092 trusted root CA prior to insertion into Pluto's chained list.
4094 - replaced the --assign option by the -v option in the auto awk script
4095 in order to make it run with mawk under debian/woody.
4101 - Split of the status information between ipsec auto --status (concise)
4102 and ipsec auto --statusall (verbose). Both commands can be used with
4103 an optional connection selector:
4105 ipsec auto --status[all] <connection_name>
4107 - Added the description of X.509 related features to the ipsec_auto(8)
4110 - Hardened the ASN.1 parser in debug mode, especially the printing
4111 of malformed distinguished names.
4113 - The size of an RSA public key received in a certificate is now restricted to
4115 512 bits <= modulus length <= 8192 bits.
4117 - Fixed the debug mode enumeration.
4123 - Fixed another PKCS#7 vulnerability which could lead to an
4124 endless loop while following the X.509 trust chain.
4130 - Fixed the PKCS#7 vulnerability discovered by Thomas Walpuski
4131 that accepted end certificates having identical issuer and subject
4132 distinguished names in a multi-tier X.509 trust chain.
4138 - Removed all remaining references to ipsec_netlink.h in KLIPS.
4144 - The new "ca" section allows to define the following parameters:
4147 cacert=koolCA.pem # cacert of kool CA
4148 ocspuri=http://ocsp.kool.net:8001 # ocsp server
4149 ldapserver=ldap.kool.net # default ldap server
4150 crluri=http://www.kool.net/kool.crl # crl distribution point
4151 crluri2="ldap:///O=Kool, C= .." # crl distribution point #2
4152 auto=add # add, ignore
4154 The ca definitions can be monitored via the command
4156 ipsec auto --listcainfos
4158 - Fixed cosmetic corruption of /proc filesystem by integrating
4159 D. Hugh Redelmeier's freeswan-2.06 kernel fixes.
4165 - Added support for the 818043 NAT-Traversal update of Microsoft's
4166 Windows 2000/XP IPsec client which sends an ID_FQDN during Quick Mode.
4168 - A symbolic link to libcrypto is now added in the kernel sources
4169 during kernel compilation
4171 - Fixed a couple of 64 bit issues (mostly casts to int).
4172 Thanks to Ken Bantoft who checked my sources on a 64 bit platform.
4174 - Replaced s[n]printf() statements in the kernel by ipsec_snprintf().
4175 Credits go to D. Hugh Redelmeier, Michael Richardson, and Sam Sgro
4176 of the FreeS/WAN team who solved this problem with the 2.4.25 kernel.
4182 - an empty ASN.1 SEQUENCE OF or SET OF object (e.g. a subjectAltName
4183 certificate extension which contains no generalName item) can cause
4184 a pluto crash. This bug has been fixed. Additionally the ASN.1 parser has
4185 been hardened to make it more robust against malformed ASN.1 objects.
4187 - applied Herbert Xu's NAT-T patches which fixes NAT-T under the native
4188 Linux 2.6 IPsec stack.
4194 - based on freeswan-2.04, x509-1.5.3, nat-0.6c, alg-0.8.1rc12