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Windows 7¶
Windows 7 fully supports the IKEv2 (RFC 4306) and MOBIKE (RFC 4555) standards through Microsoft's Agile VPN functionality and is therefore able to interoperate with a strongSwan VPN gateway using these protocols. strongSwan currently can authenticate Windows 7 clients either on the basis of X.509 Machine Certificates using RSA signatures (case A) or Username/Password using EAP-MSCHAP v2 (case B).
Make sure to fulfill the certificate requirements to successfully authenticate peers with
Windows 7.
A) Authentication using X.509 Machine Certificates¶
The strongSwan VPN gateway and each
Windows 7 client need an X.509 certificate issued by a Certification Authority (CA). OpenSSL can be used to generate these certificates.
On the Windows 7 Client¶ Storing a Windows 7 machine certificate Configuring a Windows 7 Agile VPN connection Starting a Windows 7 Agile VPN connection On the strongSwan VPN Gateway¶ Configuring strongSwan for a single Windows 7 client Configuring strongSwan for multiple Windows 7 clients strongSwan connection status and log information B) Authentication using EAP-MSCHAP v2¶
In order to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks the strongSwan VPN gateway always authenticates itself with an X.509 certificate using a strong RSA signature. After a secure communications channel has been set up by the IKEv2 protocol,
Windows 7 X64 Key, the
Windows 7 clients authenticate themselves using the EAP-MSCHAPv2 protocol based on user name,
Office 2007 Key, optional windows domain and user password.
The Windows 7 Beta client did not verify the certificate trust chain and therefore was prone to man-in-the-middle attacks. This issue has been fixed in the Release Candidate. Additionally,
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 Activation Key, Microsoft added certificate checks to prevent arbitrary certificate holders to act as a gateway.
EAP-MSCHAPv2 requires MD4 to generate the NT-Hashes,
Office Standard, so either the MD4 plugin or one of the crypto library wrappers (OpenSSL,
Windows 7 Ultimate Activation Key, Gcrypt) is required.
Important: Microsoft's EAP-MSCHAPv2 implementation changed from Beta to Release Candidate. strongSwan up to 4.2.14 is compatible with the Beta version whereas the upcoming 4.3.1 release will be compatible with the Release Candidate.
On the Windows 7 Client¶ Storing a Windows 7 CA certificate Configuring a Windows 7 Agile VPN connection Starting a Windows 7 Agile VPN connection On the strongSwan VPN Gateway¶ Configuring strongSwan for multiple Windows 7 clients strongSwan connection status and log information Links¶ Adrian Dimcev's blog provides valuable information on Agile VPN connections between Windows 7 Beta and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta. MoPo users at the University of Freiburg can connect to a strongSwan VPN gateway using Windows 7 (in German). Acknowledgements¶
Many thanks go to Edward Chang and Gleb Sechenov from the Information Security Institute (ISI) of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) who provided the initial Windows 7 Beta and Ubuntu Linux test setup.