Authentication

In this page you find:

This section contains a few sub-pages: Users and Groups allow to manage all the clients that have access to the OpenVPN or IPsec services, Lockout allows to configure the VPN lockout mechanism, and Settings allows to define different means of authentication, either local on the UTM or remote.

Note

If the Switchboard is installed on the UTM, this page only shows the Settings tab, since the management of users and groups is carried out within the Switchboard module.

Users

In this page, all users that have an account on the UTM‘s VPN server are displayed in the table, and for each the following information is shown.

  • Name. The name of the user.

  • Remark. A comment.

  • Authentication server. The server used for the user authentication, which is either local (the UTM itself) or LDAP (an external LDAP server, configurable in the Settings tab).

  • Actions. The available operation that can be carried out on the account.

Note

Editing an LDAP user only allows to modify the local options, not other data like username or password, which are entirely managed by the LDAP server.

Click on Add new local user above the table to add a new local account. In the form that will show up, the following options can be specified for each user.

Add new local user

Username

The login name of the user.

Remark

An additional comment.

Authenticate using external authentication server

This checkbox is only visible if at least one external authentication server has been configured. Once it has been selected the following password input fields will disappear and the user will be authenticated by using the external authentication servers.

Password, Confirm password

The password for the user, to be entered twice. The passwords are actually not shown: To see them, tick the eye icon on the right side of the input field.

One Time Password secret

This field contains the TOTP secret for the specific user. Due to the constraints in creating these secrets it is not possible to insert them manually but they must be generated by clicking on the Generate new secret button. A QR code representation of the secret can be displayed by clicking on the Show QR Code button.

One-Time Passwords

There are many different one-time password algorithms. On UTM systems the Time-based One-Time Password algorithm has been implemented as described in RFC 6238. Since this is an open standard, applications exist for almost all devices (Android, iOS and Windows smartphones, PCs etc.). To be able to use a device, it needs to be initialized with the One Time Password Secret: Either do this by entering the secret manually or by taking a picture of the QR code.

Certificate configuration

Select how to assign a certificate to the user. The choices available in the drop-down menu are: Generate a new certificate, Upload a certificate, and Upload a Certificate signing request. Upon selection, below the drop-down menu appear the available options for each mode, which are described in the Certificates page.

Organizational unit name

The Organisation Unit to which the user belongs to, i.e., the company, enterprise, or institution department identified with the certificate.

Organization name

The organisation to which the user belongs to.

City

The city (L in the certificate) in which the organisation is located.

State or province

The state or province (ST in the certificate) in which the organisation is located.

Country

The Country (C in the certificate) in which the organisation is located, chosen from those in the selection menu. By typing one or more letters, matching countries are searched for and displayed.

Email address

The e-mail address of the user.

Group membership

In this part of the panel it is possible to assign membership to one or more groups to the user. In the search widget it is possible to filter existing groups to find matching groups. Group membership is added by clicking on the + on the right of the group name. Groups to which the user belongs are show in the textfield below. There are also shortcuts to Add all and to Remove all groups memberships at once.

Override OpenVPN options

Tick this checkbox to allow the OpenVPN protocol to be used. This option will reveal a box in which to specify custom option for the account, see below.

Override L2TP options

Tick this checkbox to show a box in which to choose the L2TP tunnel to be used.

Hint

The box for L2TP options will appear below the OpenVPN options box, if also OpenVPN option are to be overridden

Enabled services

By default, a user can use all services, i.e., OpenVPN, IPsec XAuth, and L2TP. For any new authentication sever defined, new checkboxes will appear. Tick any checkboxes to enable or disable the service for the user.

Changed in version 5.1.

Enabled

Tick the checkbox to allow the user to connect to the UTM using the selected services.

Override OpenVPN Options

Direct all client traffic through the VPN server

If this option is checked, all the traffic from the connecting client, regardless of the destination, is routed through the uplink of the UTM. The default is to route through the VPN only the client traffic to the internal networks (see next options).

Push only global options to this client

For advanced users only. Normally, when a client connects, tunnelled routes to networks that are accessible via VPN are added to the client’s routing table, to allow it to connect to the various local networks reachable from the UTM. This option should be enabled if this behaviour is not wanted, but the client’s routing tables (especially those for the internal zones) should be modified manually.

Push route to GREEN [BLUE, ORANGE] zone

When this option is active, the client will have access to the GREEN, BLUE, or ORANGE zone. These options have no effect if the corresponding zones are not enabled.

Push only these networks

If any networks is written here (one per line and in CIDR notation), only routes to these networks will be sent to the client.

Networks behind client

When the account will be used to connect a remote gateway in a GW2GW setup, this box contains the list of the networks behind the remote gateway that must be made reachable to this appliance. It is not used for roadwarrior (single) user.

Warning

This option is mandatory if the user will be used to connect a GW2GW client. If no networks are specified here, no route to them will be pushed to the other clients, making them unreachable.

Static IP addresses

Dynamic IP addresses are assigned by default to clients, but a static IP address provided here will be assigned to the client whenever it connects.

Note

If the client connects to a multicore VPN server running on the UTM, this assignment will not be taken into account.

Push these nameservers

Assign custom nameservers on a per-client basis here. This setting (and the next one) can be defined, but enabled or disabled at will.

Push these domains

Assign custom search domains on a per-client basis here.

Note

When planning to have two or more branch offices connected through a Gateway-to-Gateway VPN, it is good practice to choose different subnets for the LANs in the different branches. For example, one branch might have a GREEN zone with the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet while the other branch uses 192.168.2.0/24. Using this solution, several possible sources for errors and conflicts will be avoided. Indeed, there are several advantages, including: The automatic assignment of correct routes, without the need for pushing custom routes, no warning messages about possibly conflicting routes, correct local name resolution, and easier WAN network setup.

L2TP Options

IPsec Tunnel

This drop-down menu allows to choose the tunnel that will be employed by the user, among those already defined.

Note

If no IPsec tunnel has yet been configured or all IPsec tunnels are in closed state, the Select a tunnel… message appears instead of the list of IPsec tunnels.

Groups

In this page a table is displayed, which shows all the groups that are either defined on the UTM or on an external LDAP server. For each group the following information is shown:

  • Groupname. The name of the group.

  • Remark. A comment.

  • Authentication server. The server used for the user authentication, which is either local (the UTM itself) or LDAP (an external LDAP server, configurable in the Settings tab).

  • Actions. The available operation that can be carried out on the group.

Click on Add new local group above the table to add a new local group. In the form that will show up, the following options can be specified for each group.

Group Name

The name given to the group.

Remark

A comment.

Users

In this part of the panel it is possible to assign users to the group. in the search widget it is possible to filter existing local users to find matching users. Users are added to the group by clicking on the + on the right of the username. Users in the Group are shown in the textfield below. There are also shortcuts to Add all and to Remove all users to/from a group.

Override OpenVPN options

Tick this checkbox to allow the OpenVPN protocol to be used. This option will reveal a box in which to specify custom option for the account, which are the same as those specified for the local users.

Override L2TP options

Tick this checkbox to show a box in which to choose the L2TP tunnel to be used from a drop-down menu.

Note

If no IPsec tunnel has yet been configured or all IPsec tunnels are in closed state, the Select a tunnel… message appears instead of the list of IPsec tunnels.

Hint

The box for L2TP options will appear below the OpenVPN options box, if also OpenVPN option are to be overridden

Enabled

Tick the checkbox to enable the user, i.e., to allow her to connect to the OpenVPN server on the UTM.

Warning

While the same user can be legally part of one or more groups, care must be taken that the groups the user belongs to do not define contrasting override options. As an example, consider a user member of two groups, one allowing access only to the GREEN zone, and one only to the BLUE. In this case, it is not easy to predict whether that user will be granted or not access to the BLUE or GREEN zone. The management of these issues is left to the manager of the OpenVPN server.

Lockout

New in version 6.1.0.

This page is organised in four tabs and allows to configure how long a user or IP address will be forbidden any access after a repeated authentication failure and is intended to mitigate the effects of a brute-force or DoS attack.

Note

For the UTM, any user who utilizes the authentication daemon will be affected by the lockout module. This includes web user(s), VPN users, VPN portal users or any other defined authentication source

Dynamically locked users

The table in this tabshows at a glance all the users that have been locked out from the UTM. Username and IP-based searches within the table is possible, as well as a manual release of the locked users.

Note

A message is shown instead of the table if the Dynamic Lockout Settings (see below) are disabled.

Blacklist

In the Blacklist page, blocking rules can be defined by clicking on the Add new rule button. Whenever a connection matches one of the, rules, any login attempt will always fail, even when valid credentials are provided.

Rule editor

User (or wildcard *)

Write a username in the textfield to always block their login attempts.

Source IP (or wildcard *)

Add an IP address in the textfiled to block all login attempts from it.

Note

Since both the fields require a value, to block a user it is also needed to add a wildcard in the Source IP field; while to block an IP, a wildcard must be added to the User field. Examples:

User: johndoe
Source IP: *

User: *
Source IP: 10.64.1.120

Whitelist

Similar to the previous page, rules can be defined that will always allow connections and login attempts.

Rule editor

User (or wildcard *)

Write a username in the textfield to always allow their login attempts.

Source IP (or wildcard *)

Add an IP address in the textfiled to block all login attempts from it.

Note

Like for the Blacklist, both these fields require a value.

Dynamic lockout settings

Here the lockout settings can be configured. The whole functionality can be enabled or disabled by clicking on the toggle button on top of the page. How the lockout mechanism works is explained in the box below.

Settings

Max. failed logins

The number of failures before the first lockout. Defaults to 3.

Initial timeout

The number of seconds that the first lockout will last. Defaults to 30 seconds.

Max. timeout

The number of seconds of the longest timeout. Defaults to 600 seconds.

Backoff ratio

How much the lockout duration will increase after the second and next failed attempts. Defaults to 2.

Settings

This page contains the current configuration of the authentication servers on which the UTM relies and allows for their management. Several authentication servers are available: LDAP/Active directory, Local, One Time Password, Radius and Split Data.

If the Switchboard is installed an additional option called Switchboard Mongo DB will be shown.

There are two tables in this page, one displaying information about Authentication servers, and one showing the Authentication server mappings. In the former, this information is shown:

  • Name. The name given to the server

  • Type. Whether the server is a local or an external LDAP one.

  • Service. Which authentication is available for that server.

  • Actions.The available operation that can be carried out on the server.

The table at the bottom shows which authentication server is used in each available service, namely IPsec XAuth, OpenVPN or L2TP.

The only available action for each mapping is to edit it. By clicking on the actedit icon, a form will appear, in which a selector allows to select which authentication backends will be used for that service.

Hint

It is possible to map multiple servers to a service and use the same authentication server for more services.

A click on the Add new authentication server button above the tables opens a form in which to supply all data to set up a new authentication server.

Name

The name given to the authentication server.

Enabled

Tick the checkbox to enable the server.

Type

Select the server type from the drop-down menu. The following options are available:

  • LDAP / Active Directory

    Choose this option to use an LDAP or Active Directory server to authenticate the users. The following options are supported for this type:

    LDAP server URI

    The URI of the LDAP server.

    LDAP server type

    This drop-down menu allows the choice of the type of the authentication server among Generic, Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, or OpenLDAP. Depending on this selection, some options will not be displayed.

    LDAP bind DN username

    The fully distinguished name of the LDAP account that is used to retrieve user data from the LDAP server.

    LDAP bind DN password

    The password of the bind DN user.

    The following options depend on the server setup and are used to select users and groups on the server : LDAP user base DN, LDAP group base DN.

    When using a Generic LDAP server type additional parameters must be configured: LDAP user search filter, LDAP user unique ID attribute, LDAP group unique ID attribute, LDAP group member attribute, LDAP group search filter.

    Limit to specified groups This option allows to select which groups on the LDAP server are allowed to connect to the UTM‘s OpenVPN server.

  • LDAP / Active Directory (Password Only)

    Choose this option to use an LDAP or Active Directory server to authenticate the users. This option differs from the previous one in that directory users and groups are not synced to the UTM. This can be especially useful when dealing with very large directories (1000s of users/groups). The options displayed here are identical to the previous LDAP / Active Directory

  • Local

    Choose this option to create and manage users locally. The following option is available:

    Limit to specified groups

    This option allows to select which groups on the LDAP server are allowed to connect to the UTM‘s OpenVPN server.

  • RADIUS

    Choose this option to configure a RADIUS server. Note that RADIUS servers can only be used as password providers in both One Time Password and Split Data authentication servers. To use a RADIUS server the following options must be defined:

    RADIUS server

    The address of the RADIUS server.

    RADIUS shared secret

    The shared secret between the RADIUS server and the UTM.

    RADIUS authentication port

    The TCP port that is used for the RADIUS authentication.

    RADIUS accounting port

    The TCP port that is used for the accounting.

    RADIUS identifier

    The UTM‘s RADIUS identifier or NAS ID.

  • Split Data (User Information & Password)

    This server type works as a proxy for two different providers, but it does not add two-factor authentication. By choosing this server, two drop-down menus allow to chose different providers for users and passwords:

    User information provider

    Choose from the drop-down menu which authentication server will be used to retrieve the user information.

    Password provider

    Choose from the drop-down menu which authentication server will be used to retrieve the user information.

    Note

    If any servers of type One Time Password or type RADIUS have been defined, they will available for selection as password provider.

  • One Time Password

    The choice of this option enables two-factor authentication. Like the Split Data option, this server type acts as a proxy for two different providers with the addition of the the two-factors authentication using a time-based, one-time passwords. Choosing this type will let you select the sources for both the user information as well as the password providers. the options are the same as in the Split Data option:

    User information provider

    Choose from this drop-down menu the authentication server from which to retrieve the user information.

    Password provider

    Choose from this drop-down menu the authentication server used to authenticate the users.

  • Switchboard MongoDB

    By choosing this option, the internal database used by the Switchboard, MongoDB, will be used for authentication. No option is available for this authentication server.

    Note

    this option is available only in UTMs with the Switchboard module installed.