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 while Settings allows to define different means of authentication, either local on the Connect Switchboard or remote.

New in version 6.1.: Lockout functionality

Users

In this page, all users that have an account on the Connect Switchboard‘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 Connect Switchboard itself) or LDAP (an external LDAP server, configurable in the Settings page).

  • 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.

Authentication options

Authenticate using external authentication server

This checkbox is only visible if at least one external authentication server has been configured. Depending on the choice, either of the following options appears.

Password, Confirm password

The password for the user, to be entered twice. The passwords are actually not shown: To see them, tick the two checkboxes on their right.

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.

Note

This option appears only if an authentication server of type One Time Password has been added in the Authentication settings.

One-Time Passwords

There exist many different one-time password algorithms. On Connect Switchboard 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 initialised with the One Time Password Secret. Copy the secret manually to the smartphone, or better take a picture of the QR code or scan it.

user certificate

Certificate configuration

Select how to assign a certificate to the user. The choices available in the drop-down menu are: Don’t change (i.e., inherit the configuration from the server), Generate a new certificate, Upload a certificate, and Upload a Certificate request. Upon selection, below the drop-down menu appear the available options for each mode, which are described in the Certificates page.

additional user information

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.

Member of

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 group’s name in the left column, and removed by clicking on the name in the right column. There are also shortcuts to add or remove all groups at once by clicking on >> and << respectively.

Note

At least one group must have been defined in groups settings.

vpn custom options

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. Tick any checkboxes to enable or disable the service for the user.

Enabled

Tick the checkbox to allow the user to connect to the Connect Switchboard using the selected services.

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 Connect Switchboard. 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 Connect Switchboard. 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.

custom client routing

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 user will be used to connect a remote gateway in a GW2GW setup, this box contains the list of the networks laying behind the client that must be made reachable from the other clients through the OpenVPN Server. It is not used for roadwarrior (single) user.

Warning

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

custom push configuration

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 Connect Switchboard, 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, several advantages come for free, 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 Connect Switchboard 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 Connect Switchboard itself) or LDAP (an external LDAP server, configurable in the Settings page).

  • 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.

Add

Group Name

The name given to the group.

Remark

A comment.

Group members

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. Group membership is added by clicking on the user’s name in the left column, and removed by clicking on the name in the right column. There are also shortcuts to add or remove all groups at once by clicking on >> and << respectively.

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 Connect Switchboard.

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 DDos attack.

Dynamically locked users

The table in this tabshows at a glance all the users that have been locked out from the Switchboard. 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 Connect Switchboard relies and allows for their management. Several authentication servers are available: LDAP/Active directory, Local, One Time Password, Radius and Split Data.

There are two tables in this page, one displaying information about every Authentication server defined, and one showing the Authentication server mappings.

Authentication server

This table carries the following information:

  • 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.

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.

Add 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. Depending on the choice made, the following options are available:

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

ldap settings

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.

ldap user settings

LDAP user base DN

The name of the Directory’s section where users will be searched for.

LDAP user search filter

The user filter allows to limit the selection of users only to those that match the given filter.

LDAP user unique ID attribute

The attribute used to uniquely identify the user.

ldap group settings

LDAP group base DN

The name of the Directory’s section where groups will be searched for.

LDAP group search filter

The group filter allows to limit the selection of groups only to those that match the given filter.

LDAP group unique ID attribute

The attribute used to uniquely identify the group.

LDAP group member attribute

The attribute used for group members.

Limit to specified groups

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

Note

When saving the settings, a click on the Add button will immediately start the synchronisation process of groups and users between the Connect Switchboard and the LDAP server.

Authentication server mappings

This table 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 edit 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.