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IPSEC(4)	       FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual		      IPSEC(4)

NAME
     IPsec -- Internet Protocol	Security protocol

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 Encapsu-
     lating 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	reduc-
     ing 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 com-
     munication	between	end nodes.  Tunnel mode	encapsulates IP	packets	within
     other IP packets and is designed for security gateways such as VPN	end-
     points.

     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 fire-
     walls, 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 associat-
     ing 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 pro-
     tocol such	as IKE (Internet Key Exchange).	 Key exchange protocols	are
     beyond what is necessary in the kernel and	should be implemented as dae-
     mon 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 configur-
     ing kernel	level packet filter-based policies using the PF_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 pro-
     cessed 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 the IPsec 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    Off

     In	addition the following variables are accessible	via sysctl(8), for
     tweaking the kernel's IPsec behavior:

     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:

     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	imple-
	     ment 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 notifica-
	     tion), 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
     The IPsec protocol	acts as	a plug-in to the inet(4) and inet6(4) proto-
     cols and therefore	supports most of the protocols defined upon those IP-
     layer protocols.  The icmp(4) and icmp6(4)	protocols may behave differ-
     ently 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 original IPsec	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)	sub-
     system.

     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 authen-
     ticity).  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 support is currently broken.

     This documentation	needs more review.

FreeBSD	11.1			 May 23, 2009			  FreeBSD 11.1

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | PROTOCOLS | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY | BUGS

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