Libreswan Opportunistic IPsec using LetsEncrypt
Introduction
Libreswan Opportunistic IPsec using LetsEncrypt is a project created during Google Summer of Code 2019. It adds a utility letsencrypt
to the ipsec
. letsencrypt invokes any of several utilities involved in controlling the Opportunistic Encryption system, running the specified {command} with the specified [argument] as if it had been invoked directly.
e.g. ipsec letsencrypt -h
lists the available commands.
It is a program in libreswan, which integrates libreswan with Opportunistic Encryption utilities. The script provides various OE functionality e.g. initial OE setup, testing configuration/connection, generating and updating Let's Encrypt certificates. The details about the utilities and using them can be found in the Documentation: Libreswan Opportunistic IPsec using LetsEncrypt . Also, the documentation includes the sample output for each {command} and [argument].
Implementation
Various functionalities of the project are listed below:
- Can establish the secure OE (Opportunistic Encryption) connections between two hosts (client and server).
- Checks for the success in establishing the OE connection.
- Easy to install on the hosts (client and server).
- Can test OE connections between two hosts.
- Checks if certbot is installed (on the server).
- Can generate Let's Encrypt certificates for the server using certbot.
- Generates the certbot configuration for reusing the private key.
- Enables automatic update of the generated certificates using cron tabs, keeping the private key same.
- Manual updating of keys also implemented.
- Generates the #pkcs12 file.
- Imports the generated certificates into NSS Database to be used for OE.
- Downloads the LetsEncrypt CA and intermediate certificates.
- Saves the default client/server configuration.
- Displays OE connection status to the user.
- Displays the certificates installed in NSS database.
- Provides details about various available utilities, {commands} and [arguments].
Source code
The source code of Libreswan Opportunistic IPsec using LetsEncrypt is available at Github:Libreswan-Opportunistic-IPsec. The original developer of the program is Rishabh. The project was developed under the expert guidance/mentorship of Paul Wouters & Tuomo Soini. This project was sponsored by Google as a part of Google Summer of Code 2019 Program.
Future Scope
Following are the future Scopes of the project:
- NSS certificates reload needs to restart IPSec.
- Option for testing connection for any custom server.
- Enabling server to server communication.
- Fixing the issue when 2 tunnels are up for the same connection, whenever the server/client restarts or crashes.
- Adding functionality to choose from multiple configurations for clients and servers.
- Auto detecting whether the other host is server or client and choose from the available configurations accordingly.
- Add functionality to fix the commonly found issues automatically. E.g. when the user has more than one configuration files in /etc/ipsec.d directory OR when there is no host ip in policies/private-*.
License
This project is Licensed under GNU General Public License v2.0.