IPSEC(4) | Device Drivers Manual | IPSEC(4) |
NAME¶
ipsec
—
SYNOPSIS¶
options IPSEC
device crypto
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <netipsec/ipsec.h>
#include
<netipsec/ipsec6.h>
DESCRIPTION¶
ipsec
is a security protocol implemented within the
Internet Protocol layer of the networking stack. ipsec
is defined for both IPv4 and IPv6 (inet(4) and
inet6(4)). ipsec
is a set of
protocols, ESP (for Encapsulating Security Payload) AH (for Authentication
Header), and IPComp (for IP Payload Compression Protocol) that provide
security services for IP datagrams. AH both authenticates and guarantees the
integrity of an IP packet by attaching a cryptographic checksum computed using
one-way hash functions. ESP, in addition, prevents unauthorized parties from
reading the payload of an IP packet by also encrypting it. IPComp tries to
increase communication performance by compressing IP payload, thus reducing
the amount of data sent. This will help nodes on slow links but with enough
computing power. ipsec
operates in one of two modes:
transport mode or tunnel mode. Transport mode is used to protect peer-to-peer
communication between end nodes. Tunnel mode encapsulates IP packets within
other IP packets and is designed for security gateways such as VPN endpoints.
System configuration requires the crypto(4) subsystem.
The packets can be passed to a virtual enc(4) interface, to perform packet filtering before outbound encryption and after decapsulation inbound.
To properly filter on the inner packets of an
ipsec
tunnel with firewalls, you can change the
values of the following sysctls
Name | Default | Enable |
net.inet.ipsec.filtertunnel | 0 | 1 |
net.inet6.ipsec6.filtertunnel | 0 | 1 |
Kernel interface¶
ipsec
is controlled by a key management and policy
engine, that reside in the operating system kernel. Key management is the
process of associating keys with security associations, also know as SAs.
Policy management dictates when new security associations created or
destroyed.
The key management engine can be accessed from userland by using
PF_KEY
sockets. The PF_KEY
socket API is defined in RFC2367.
The policy engine is controlled by an extension to the
PF_KEY
API, setsockopt(2)
operations, and sysctl(3) interface. The kernel implements
an extended version of the PF_KEY
interface and
allows the programmer to define IPsec policies which are similar to the
per-packet filters. The setsockopt(2) interface is used to
define per-socket behavior, and sysctl(3) interface is
used to define host-wide default behavior.
The kernel code does not implement a dynamic encryption key
exchange protocol such as IKE (Internet Key Exchange). Key exchange
protocols are beyond what is necessary in the kernel and should be
implemented as daemon processes which call the
APIs.
Policy management¶
IPsec policies can be managed in one of two ways, either by configuring per-socket policies using the setsockopt(2) system calls, or by configuring kernel level packet filter-based policies using thePF_KEY
interface, via the setkey(8)
you can define IPsec policies against packets using rules similar to packet
filtering rules. Refer to setkey(8) on how to use it.
When setting policies using the setkey(8)
command, the “default
” option
instructs the system to use its default policy, as explained below, for
processing packets. The following sysctl variables are available for
configuring the system's IPsec behavior. The variables can have one of two
values. A 1
means
“use
”, which means that if there is a
security association then use it but if there is not then the packets are
not processed by IPsec. The value 2
is synonymous
with “require
”, which requires that a
security association must exist for the packets to move, and not be dropped.
These terms are defined in ipsec_set_policy(8).
Name | Type | Changeable |
net.inet.ipsec.esp_trans_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.esp_net_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.ah_trans_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.ah_net_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.esp_trans_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.esp_net_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.ah_trans_deflev | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.ah_net_deflev | integer | yes |
If the kernel does not find a matching, system wide, policy then
the default value is applied. The system wide default policy is specified by
the following sysctl(8) variables.
0
means
“discard
” which asks the kernel to
drop the packet. 1
means
“none
”.
Name | Type | Changeable |
net.inet.ipsec.def_policy | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.def_policy | integer | yes |
Miscellaneous sysctl variables¶
When theipsec
protocols are configured for use, all
protocols are included in the system. To selectively enable/disable protocols,
use sysctl(8).
Name | Default |
net.inet.esp.esp_enable | On |
net.inet.ah.ah_enable | On |
net.inet.ipcomp.ipcomp_enable | On |
In addition the following variables are accessible via sysctl(8), for tweaking the kernel's IPsec behavior:
Sy Name | Type | Changeable |
net.inet.ipsec.ah_cleartos | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.ah_offsetmask | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.dfbit | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.ecn | integer | yes |
net.inet.ipsec.debug | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.ecn | integer | yes |
net.inet6.ipsec6.debug | integer | yes |
The variables are interpreted as follows:
- Li ipsec.ah_cleartos
- If set to non-zero, the kernel clears the type-of-service field in the IPv4 header during AH authentication data computation. This variable is used to get current systems to inter-operate with devices that implement RFC1826 AH. It should be set to non-zero (clear the type-of-service field) for RFC2402 conformance.
ipsec.ah_offsetmask
- During AH authentication data computation, the kernel will include a 16bit fragment offset field (including flag bits) in the IPv4 header, after computing logical AND with the variable. The variable is used for inter-operating with devices that implement RFC1826 AH. It should be set to zero (clear the fragment offset field during computation) for RFC2402 conformance.
ipsec.dfbit
- This variable configures the kernel behavior on IPv4 IPsec tunnel encapsulation. If set to 0, the DF bit on the outer IPv4 header will be cleared while 1 means that the outer DF bit is set regardless from the inner DF bit and 2 indicates that the DF bit is copied from the inner header to the outer one. The variable is supplied to conform to RFC2401 chapter 6.1.
ipsec.ecn
- If set to non-zero, IPv4 IPsec tunnel encapsulation/decapsulation behavior
will be friendly to ECN (explicit congestion notification), as documented
in
draft-ietf-ipsec-ecn-02.txt
. gif(4) talks more about the behavior. ipsec.debug
- If set to non-zero, debug messages will be generated via syslog(3).
Variables under the net.inet6.ipsec6
tree
have similar meanings to those described above.
PROTOCOLS¶
Theipsec
protocol acts as a plug-in to the
inet(4) and inet6(4) protocols and
therefore supports most of the protocols defined upon those IP-layer
protocols. The icmp(4) and icmp6(4)
protocols may behave differently with ipsec
because
ipsec
can prevent icmp(4) or
icmp6(4) routines from looking into the IP payload.
SEE ALSO¶
ioctl(2), socket(2), ipsec_set_policy(3), crypto(4), enc(4), icmp6(4), intro(4), ip6(4), setkey(8), sysctl(8)S. Kent and R. Atkinson, IP Authentication Header, RFC 2404.
S. Kent and R. Atkinson, IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP), RFC 2406.
STANDARDS¶
Daniel L. McDonald, Craig Metz, and Bao G. Phan, PF_KEY Key Management API, Version 2, RFC, 2367.D. L. McDonald, A Simple IP Security API Extension to BSD Sockets, internet draft, draft-mcdonald-simple-ipsec-api-03.txt, work in progress material.
HISTORY¶
The originalipsec
implementation appeared in the
WIDE/KAME IPv6/IPsec stack.
For FreeBSD 5.0 a fully locked IPsec implementation called fast_ipsec was brought in. The protocols drew heavily on the OpenBSD implementation of the IPsec protocols. The policy management code was derived from the KAME implementation found in their IPsec protocols. The fast_ipsec implementation lacked ip6(4) support but made use of the crypto(4) subsystem.
For FreeBSD 7.0 ip6(4)
support was added to fast_ipsec. After this the old KAME IPsec
implementation was dropped and fast_ipsec became what now is the only
ipsec
implementation in
FreeBSD.
BUGS¶
There is no single standard for the policy engine API, so the policy engine API described herein is just for this implementation.AH and tunnel mode encapsulation may not work as you might expect.
If you configure inbound “require” policy with an AH tunnel or
any IPsec encapsulating policy with AH (like
“esp/tunnel/A-B/use
ah/transport/A-B/require
”), tunnelled packets will be
rejected. This is because the policy check is enforced on the inner packet
on reception, and AH authenticates encapsulating (outer) packet, not the
encapsulated (inner) packet (so for the receiving kernel there is no sign of
authenticity). The issue will be solved when we revamp our policy engine to
keep all the packet decapsulation history.
When a large database of security associations or policies is
present in the kernel the SADB_DUMP
and
SADB_SPDDUMP
operations on
PF_KEY
sockets may fail due to lack of space.
Increasing the socket buffer size may alleviate this problem.
The IPcomp protocol may occasionally error because of zlib(3) problems.
This documentation needs more review.
November 29, 2009 | Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64 |