VPN issue special characters in shared secret

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Level 1

4 points

VPN issue special characters in shared secret

Hey Guys

Hope you are doing great!

I'm having an issue using built-in (MacOS) VPN client with Cisco IPSec VPN when shared secret contains "/" character. When I try to connect it says "The VPN Shared Secret is incorrect".

I am sure that the shared secret is right since it allows authentication when I use vpnc (it does not establish connection since it is not allowed in Sierra, but it does accept the shared key).

I was trying to escape the character by a backslash ("\") with no luck.

Unfortunately, I cannot change the shared key since it would affect other employees in my company. 😟

Is there a way to solve such issue?

Thank you

Andrii.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Feb 1, 2017 3:19 AM

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Answer 1

mirnuj_atom Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 1, 2017 4:18 AM in response to John Lockwood

Hey John

Thank you for such a quick reply!

Please find my answers below:

This might be a bug in Apple's own built-in VPN Cisco IPSec client. If you have a genuine Cisco VPN server you could try the official Cisco client as a workaround.

Forgot to mention, the official Cisco client works well, but it much less convenient than MacOS native client for me.

Your post implies this pre-shared-key is working for other users. Are any of them using the same version of Mac operating system? Are any of them using a previous version?

Once you have narrowed down the circumstances that have this problem e.g. only Mac users running Sierra then you could register for the free public beta of Sierra 10.12.4 and test the problem with that. You could then officially report it as a problem to Apple if 10.12.4 still has this issue.

See - https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/

Yes, it works under Linux (vpnc), Windows and MacOS when using native Cisco Anyconnect. The problem exists since 10.9, so it is not the latest version bug. Just tested on my colleague's 10.11.3 OSX with the same results, so the issue exists not only on Sierra.

Thank you

Andrii

PS: sorry for my poor English 🙂

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Answer 2

Feb 1, 2017 3:49 AM in response to mirnuj_atom

This might be a bug in Apple's own built-in Cisco IPSec VPN client. If you have a genuine Cisco VPN server you could try the official Cisco client as a workaround.

Your post implies this pre-shared-key is working for other users. Are any of them using the same version of Mac operating system? Are any of them using a previous version?

Once you have narrowed down the circumstances that have this problem e.g. only Mac users running Sierra then you could register for the free public beta of Sierra 10.12.4 and test the problem with that. You could then officially report it as a problem to Apple if 10.12.4 still has this issue.

See - https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/

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Answer 3

Feb 1, 2017 5:14 AM in response to mirnuj_atom

Since the pre-shared-key works in the official Cisco client but not in various versions of Mac client I think we can assume it is an Apple bug.

I would therefore still recommend signing up for and testing with the Sierra beta, this will allow you to make an official bug report to Apple.

Unfortunately I can tell you that even if Apple agree it is a bug it will only get fixed in Sierra. Apple in general do not fix bugs in previous discontinued versions of OS X they only fix security issues in previous issues.

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Answer 4

Feb 1, 2017 3:58 AM in response to mirnuj_atom

The slash character should not be treated specially in this context.

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Answer 5

mirnuj_atom Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 1, 2017 4:20 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

The shared secret I use also contains "-" character, maybe it is the case?

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