Chacha Cipher
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I would like the Chacha Cipher to be a part of the pfsense option. Google has proposed ChaCha20 as option and is notably 3 times faster than AES. Airvpn has also put out some servers on ChaCha option. With quantum computing not far way from solving and breaking the encryption, hope pfsense devices take the lead on its implementation.
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pfSense is dependent on the underlying FreeBSD version. Chacha is included with FreeBSD 12, which pfSense 2.5.0 will be based on. Whether it will be exposed in WebGUI is another matter.
https://ianix.com/pub/chacha-deployment.html
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Where exactly are you wanting to use chacha - since I ssh to pfsense using chacha20 now..
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On Airvpn servers through Netgate Pfsense firewall.
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Yeah your going to have to wait for that..
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With OpenVPN or IPsec?
OpenVPN doesn't have support for those ciphers as far as I can see. Maybe in their development versions, but not what we're running.
strongSwan appears to support it with some extra config and enabling a plugin, but there is no plan to support it in pfSense at the moment. I'm sure we'll get to it eventually, though.
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well now it is supported and working for airvpn / openvpn configuration in pfsense 2.5 version
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Have you tested it? Is it fast?
Looks to be x86 only currently.
Steve
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I'm Using the 64bit version in my testlab so it's for both versions
It is fast but don't really see big performance change because i'm using an AES-ni enabled cpu but don't see any bottleneck not using it. Its stable,more secure and TLS1.3 as for cpu performance it is the same as for cypher AES-256GCM Auth digest algorithm SHA 512 bit AES_NI enabled so for users without AES-NI would benefit of it and of course less overhead for VPN Providers /servers in the future if everyone using this cypher.
If you looking at the server side then I would say that you have less cpu overhead let say Half less.
I have an 1gb fiber connection @ 800 Mbps AES-256GCM AES-NI cpu enabled 10% cpu use
850 Mbps ChaCha20-Poly 15% cpu use
Its depended what system you are using for me its better but not huge
But also not a party breaker for not using it -
I can see OpenVPN ChaCha20 support on the latest snapshot:
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Yeah, I'm seeing it in all 2.5 snaps now. No idea what I was looking at earlier. Too many test boxes!
