Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    IPsec MikroTik <–> pfSense 2.2 broken

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IPsec
    18 Posts 9 Posters 25.3k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • R
      Riccardo90
      last edited by

      Hello,
      I have the same issue of you, but i have it also to PfSense to PfSense IPSec connection.

      i tried several times to reload the service on both sites, reconfigure the VPN, changing the parameters, but nothing to do.. IPSec is still down with all sites.

      Before the upgrade i was able to use the VPN tunnel with Cisco Meraki environment, PfSense etc..

      Do you have any suggestion?.. there is any way to replace the strongSwan with racoon?

      Thanks,
      Regards

      Riccardo

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • P
        patrick7
        last edited by

        @georgeman Thanks - seems to be the solution. But now the problem is that the first traffic needs to come from pfSense site to establish the IPsec. In my case, all traffic comes from MikroTik site. Also the "Automatically ping host" option does not work. Bug in pfSense?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Z
          Zeon
          last edited by

          Yea I had another thread about something similar for pfsense to pfsense. Think there are some changes in the new IPSEC which changes previously working behaviour.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • C
            cmb
            last edited by

            @georgeman:

            Still, there's an issue. As per the MikroTik logs, it looks like OpenSwan is proposing "0.0.0.0/0" as the phase2 subnet, but only when working as a responder ???

            Try disabling the unity plugin on the advanced settings tab under VPN>IPsec, there is some circumstance with unity which kicks strongswan into changing its local to 0.0.0.0/0. If you know of a config to reliably replicate that, I'd like to know details so we have a replicable test case to help get that problem fixed upstream in strongswan.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • G
              georgeman
              last edited by

              @cmb:

              @georgeman:

              Still, there's an issue. As per the MikroTik logs, it looks like OpenSwan is proposing "0.0.0.0/0" as the phase2 subnet, but only when working as a responder ???

              Try disabling the unity plugin on the advanced settings tab under VPN>IPsec, there is some circumstance with unity which kicks strongswan into changing its local to 0.0.0.0/0. If you know of a config to reliably replicate that, I'd like to know details so we have a replicable test case to help get that problem fixed upstream in strongswan.

              Seems to be (at least) partially related to what you mention, except after disabling the Cisco Unity plugin it keeps behaving in the same way (I even rebooted the box after disabling unity).

              This is a site-to-site IKEv1 VPN from an Alix 2D13 towards a MikroTik RB750 running RouterOS v6.25 (latest), configured with RSA authentication, which BTW worked fine with pfSense v2.1.x and racoon.

              This is on the strongswan log:

              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39> configured proposals: ESP:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/NO_EXT_SEQ
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] configured proposals: ESP:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/NO_EXT_SEQ
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39> configured proposals: ESP:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/NO_EXT_SEQ
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] configured proposals: ESP:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/NO_EXT_SEQ
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39> proposing traffic selectors for us:
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] proposing traffic selectors for us:
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39>  172.21.2.0/24|/0
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG]  172.21.2.0/24|/0
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39> proposing traffic selectors for other:
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] proposing traffic selectors for other:
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39>  172.21.3.0/24|/0
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG]  172.21.3.0/24|/0
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39> changing proposed traffic selectors for us:
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] changing proposed traffic selectors for us:
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG] <con2000|39>  0.0.0.0/0|/0
              Jan 26 20:31:41 pfsenseurq charon: 12[CFG]  0.0.0.0/0|/0</con2000|39></con2000|39></con2000|39></con2000|39></con2000|39></con2000|39></con2000|39></con2000|39>
              

              This is what gets logged on the MikroTik device:

              no policy found: 0.0.0.0/0[0] 172.21.3.0/24[0] proto=any dir=in
              failed to get proposal for responder.
              failed to pre-process ph2 packet.
              

              strongswan.conf

              
              # Automatically generated config file - DO NOT MODIFY. Changes will be overwritten. 
              starter {
              load_warning = no
              }
              
              charon {
              # number of worker threads in charon
              threads = 16
              ikesa_table_size = 32
              ikesa_table_segments = 4
              init_limit_half_open = 1000
              install_routes = no
              
              cisco_unity = no
              interfaces_use = vr2,vr0
              
              # And two loggers using syslog. The subsections define the facility to log
              # to, currently one of: daemon, auth.
              syslog {
              	identifier = charon
              	# default level to the LOG_DAEMON facility
              	daemon {
              	}
              	# very minimalistic IKE auditing logs to LOG_AUTHPRIV
              	auth {
              		default = -1
              		ike = 1
              		ike_name = yes
              	}
              }
              	plugins {
              	}
              }
              

              Relevant part of ipsec.conf

              conn con2000
              	reqid = 4
              	fragmentation = yes
              	keyexchange = ikev1
              	reauth = yes
              	forceencaps = no
              	rekey = yes
              	installpolicy = yes
              	type = tunnel
              	dpdaction = restart
              	dpddelay = 10s
              	dpdtimeout = 60s
              	auto = route
              	left = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
              	right = yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy
              	leftid = 
              	ikelifetime = 28800s
              	lifetime = 3600s
              	ike = aes128-sha1-modp1024!
              	esp = aes128-sha1,aes128-sha1!
              	leftauth = pubkey
              	rightauth = pubkey
              	leftcert=/var/etc/ipsec/ipsec.d/certs/cert-2.crt
              	rightid = <<certificate cn="" between="" quotes="">>
              	aggressive = no
              	rightsubnet = 172.21.3.0/24
              	leftsubnet = 172.21.2.0/24</certificate>
              

              This is only happening when strongswan works as a responder.

              On the MikroTik documentation, it says the following:

              @http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:IP/IPsec#Mode_Config:

              Note: If RouterOS client is initiator, it will always send CISCO UNITY extension, and RouterOS supports only split-include from this extension.

              Any clues?? I couldn't find further information on how to stop this behavior from strongswan.

              If you need more info, please let me know.

              Best regards!

              If it ain't broke, you haven't tampered enough with it

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • G
                georgeman
                last edited by

                Ok, although the option is checked on the GUI, unity does not seem to be disabled:

                [2.2-RELEASE][root@xxx]/root:  ipsec statusall
                Status of IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.2.1, FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p4, i386):
                  uptime: 49 seconds, since Jan 26 22:00:58 2015
                  worker threads: 10 of 16 idle, 6/0/0/0 working, job queue: 0/0/0/0, scheduled: 8
                  loaded plugins: charon unbound aes des blowfish rc2 sha1 sha2 md4 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs7 pkcs8 pkcs12 pgp dnskey sshkey ipseckey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac curl attr kernel-pfkey kernel-pfroute resolve socket-default stroke smp updown eap-identity eap-sim eap-aka eap-aka-3gpp2 eap-md5 eap-mschapv2 eap-dynamic eap-radius eap-tls eap-ttls eap-peap xauth-generic xauth-eap whitelist addrblock unity
                

                Does the "cisco_unity" option in strongswan.conf completely disable the plugin, or is it just a configuration option that makes it not send the flags when initiating a connection? Can it be disabled in other way besides at configure time??

                Cheers!

                If it ain't broke, you haven't tampered enough with it

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • G
                  georgeman
                  last edited by

                  Alright, I modified /etc/inc/vpn.inc so the generated strongswan.conf gets an explicit list of plugins to load:

                  # Automatically generated config file - DO NOT MODIFY. Changes will be overwritten. 
                  starter {
                  load_warning = no
                  }
                  
                  charon {
                  load = charon unbound aes des blowfish rc2 sha1 sha2 md4 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs7 pkcs8 pkcs12 pgp dnskey sshkey ipseckey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac curl attr kernel-pfkey kernel-pfroute resolve socket-default stroke smp updown eap-identity eap-sim eap-aka eap-aka-3gpp2 eap-md5 eap-mschapv2 eap-dynamic eap-radius eap-tls eap-ttls eap-peap xauth-generic xauth-eap whitelist addrblock
                  # number of worker threads in charon
                  threads = 16
                  ikesa_table_size = 32
                  ikesa_table_segments = 4
                  init_limit_half_open = 1000
                  install_routes = no
                  {$i_dont_care_about_security_and_use_aggressive_mode_psk}
                  {$accept_unencrypted}
                  # cisco_unity = {$unity_enabled}
                  {$ifacesuse}
                  
                  # And two loggers using syslog. The subsections define the facility to log
                  # to, currently one of: daemon, auth.
                  syslog {
                  	identifier = charon
                  	# default level to the LOG_DAEMON facility
                  	daemon {
                  	}
                  	# very minimalistic IKE auditing logs to LOG_AUTHPRIV
                  	auth {
                  		default = -1
                  		ike = 1
                  		ike_name = yes
                  	}
                  }
                  
                  EOD;
                  

                  I got that list from the regular list of loaded plugins from "ipsec statusall" but removed unity from it. Once unity is not loaded, the phase2 settings are not automatically changed anymore and everything works fine.

                  I am not sure if this is the proper way to handle it, but I seriously needed this to work right away. Feedback is appreciated.

                  Conclusions from all these:

                  • The unity plugin is the culprit (probably worth reporting and/or fixing upstream)
                  • pfSense is not properly disabling the unity plugin

                  Best regards!!

                  If it ain't broke, you haven't tampered enough with it

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • C
                    cmb
                    last edited by

                    It does set "cisco_unity = no" in strongswan.conf when you disable it, which should be adequate, but sounds like that's not enough to fix that problem.

                    Hopefully with your Mikrotik config there I'll be able to replicate it now. Added note to the still-open bug on this.
                    https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/4178

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • E
                      eri--
                      last edited by

                      Can you also please do a test by choosing another modp than 1024 on both phase1 and phase2?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • A
                        abidkhanhk
                        last edited by

                        Hi,

                        I am also having same issue, only the 1st entry of the P2 connected and rest dont work

                        the Tunnels are between 2 PFboxes,

                        at first i thought it was because tunnel from 2.1.5 were not compatible with 2.2 and created new ones

                        tried the following

                        • changed IKE to all three modes V1, V2 and Auto,
                        • disabled Unity option in advanced menu
                        • Changed PFS to off and other options

                        both boxes are upgraded to 2.2 release.

                        Regards
                        Abid

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • G
                          georgeman
                          last edited by

                          @hongkonger: that is not the same issue

                          @ermal: I tried the following combinations of ph1 / ph2 and all of them behave in the same way when the unity plugin is loaded, as described before:

                          modp1024 / none
                          modp768 / none
                          modp768 / modp768
                          modp2048 / none
                          modp2048 / modp2048
                          modp1536 / modp768
                          modp768 / modp1536

                          If it ain't broke, you haven't tampered enough with it

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • E
                            eri--
                            last edited by

                            Do all tunnels have the same subnets specified on phase2?

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • G
                              georgeman
                              last edited by

                              I forgot to mention that I tested with only one phase1 and one phase2 on both sides.

                              Best regards

                              If it ain't broke, you haven't tampered enough with it

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • Z
                                zueri
                                last edited by

                                Sorry to warm up this topic.

                                Is there any news on this? I've updated to 2.2.1 last week and am facing the same issues. Switch Mikrotik to passive helped but it is not realy a good solution for me (Mikrotik should be Initiator in my case).

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • C
                                  cmb
                                  last edited by

                                  The unity bug that was the source of OP's issue was fixed/worked around in 2.2.1. If you check the "disable unity" checkbox on the advanced tab, it'll prevent that from being an issue.

                                  @zueri:

                                  Is there any news on this? I've updated to 2.2.1 last week and am facing the same issues. Switch Mikrotik to passive helped but it is not realy a good solution for me (Mikrotik should be Initiator in my case).

                                  That definitely sounds the same as OP's issue, disable unity.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • P
                                    pfoerster
                                    last edited by

                                    This post is deleted!
                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • First post
                                      Last post
                                    Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.