OpenConnect VPN client.
Description: VPN client compatible with Cisco AnyConnect SSL VPN
Keywords: OpenConnect, AnyConnect, Cisco, VPN, SSLVPN, SSL VPN

Home Features Getting Started Mailing List / Help Contribute Protocols VPN Server

OpenConnect VPN client

Building vpnc-script Connecting Manual

# OPENCONNECT

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
SIGNALS
LIMITATIONS
AUTHORS

## NAME

openconnect - Connect to Cisco AnyConnect VPN

## SYNOPSIS

| openconnect |  | [--config configfile] [-b,--background] [--pid-file pidfile] [-c,--certificate cert] [-e,--cert-expire-warning days] [-k,--sslkey key] [-C,--cookie cookie] [--cookie-on-stdin] [--compression MODE] [-d,--deflate] [-D,--no-deflate] [--force-dpd interval] [-g,--usergroup group] [-h,--help] [--http-auth methods] [-i,--interface ifname] [-l,--syslog] [--timestamp] [-U,--setuid user] [--csd-user user] [-m,--mtu mtu] [--basemtu mtu] [-p,--key-password pass] [-P,--proxy proxyurl] [--proxy-auth methods] [--no-proxy] [--libproxy] [--key-password-from-fsid] [-q,--quiet] [-Q,--queue-len len] [-s,--script vpnc-script] [-S,--script-tun] [-u,--user name] [-V,--version] [-v,--verbose] [-x,--xmlconfig config] [--authgroup group] [--authenticate] [--cookieonly] [--printcookie] [--cafile file] [--disable-ipv6] [--dtls-ciphers list] [--dtls-local-port port] [--dump-http-traffic] [--no-cert-check] [--no-system-trust] [--pfs] [--no-dtls] [--no-http-keepalive] [--no-passwd] [--no-xmlpost] [--non-inter] [--passwd-on-stdin] [--token-mode mode] [--token-secret {secret[,counter]|@file}] [--reconnect-timeout] [--servercert sha1] [--useragent string] [--os string] [https://]server[:port][/group]

## DESCRIPTION

The program openconnect connects to Cisco "AnyConnect" VPN servers, which use standard TLS and DTLS protocols for data transport.

The connection happens in two phases. First there is a simple HTTPS connection over which the user authenticates somehow - by using a certificate, or password or SecurID, etc. Having authenticated, the user is rewarded with an HTTP cookie which can be used to make the real VPN connection.

The second phase uses that cookie in an HTTPS CONNECT request, and data packets can be passed over the resulting connection. In auxiliary headers exchanged with the CONNECT request, a Session-ID and Master Secret for a DTLS connection are also exchanged, which allows data transport over UDP to occur.

## OPTIONS

--config=CONFIGFILE

Read further options from CONFIGFILE before continuing to process options from the command line. The file should contain long-format options as would be accepted on the command line, but without the two leading -- dashes. Empty lines, or lines where the first non-space character is a # character, are ignored.

Any option except the config option may be specified in the file.

-b,--background

Continue in background after startup

--pid-file=PIDFILE

Save the pid to PIDFILE when backgrounding

-c,--certificate=CERT

Use SSL client certificate CERT which may be either a file name or, if OpenConnect has been built with an appropriate version of GnuTLS, a PKCS#11 URL.

-e,--cert-expire-warning=DAYS

Give a warning when SSL client certificate has DAYS left before expiry

-k,--sslkey=KEY

Use SSL private key KEY which may be either a file name or, if OpenConnect has been built with an appropriate version of GnuTLS, a PKCS#11 URL.

-C,--cookie=COOKIE

Use WebVPN cookie. COOKIE

--cookie-on-stdin

Read cookie from standard input.

-d,--deflate

Enable all compression, including stateful modes. By default, only stateless compression algorithms are enabled.

-D,--no-deflate

Disable all compression.

--compression=MODE

Set compression mode, where MODE is one of stateless , none , or all .

By default, only stateless compression algorithms which do not maintain state from one packet to the next (and which can be used on UDP transports) are enabled. By setting the mode to all stateful algorithms (currently only zlib deflate) can be enabled. Or all compression can be disabled by setting the mode to none .

--force-dpd=INTERVAL Use INTERVAL as minimum Dead Peer Detection interval for CSTP and DTLS, forcing use of DPD even when the server doesn’t request it.

-g,--usergroup=GROUP

Use GROUP as login UserGroup

-h,--help

Display help text

--http-auth=METHODS

Use only the specified methods for HTTP authentication to a server. By default, only Negotiate, NTLM and Digest authentication are enabled. Basic authentication is also supported but because it is insecure it must be explicitly enabled. The argument is a comma-separated list of methods to be enabled. Note that the order does not matter: OpenConnect will use Negotiate, NTLM, Digest and Basic authentication in that order, if each is enabled, regardless of the order specified in the METHODS string.

-i,--interface=IFNAME

Use IFNAME for tunnel interface

-l,--syslog

Use syslog for progress messages

--timestamp

Prepend a timestamp to each progress message

-U,--setuid=USER

Drop privileges after connecting, to become user USER

--csd-user=USER

Drop privileges during CSD (Cisco Secure Desktop) script execution.

--csd-wrapper=SCRIPT

Run SCRIPT instead of the CSD (Cisco Secure Desktop) script.

-m,--mtu=MTU

Request MTU from server as the MTU of the tunnel.

--basemtu=MTU

Indicate MTU as the path MTU between client and server on the unencrypted network. Newer servers will automatically calculate the MTU to be used on the tunnel from this value.

-p,--key-password=PASS

Provide passphrase for certificate file, or SRK (System Root Key) PIN for TPM

-P,--proxy=PROXYURL

Use HTTP or SOCKS proxy for connection. A username and password can be provided in the given URL, and will be used for authentication. If authentication is required but no credentials are given, GSSAPI and automatic NTLM authentication using Samba’s ntlm_auth helper tool may be attempted.

--proxy-auth=METHODS

Use only the specified methods for HTTP authentication to a proxy. By default, only Negotiate, NTLM and Digest authentication are enabled. Basic authentication is also supported but because it is insecure it must be explicitly enabled. The argument is a comma-separated list of methods to be enabled. Note that the order does not matter: OpenConnect will use Negotiate, NTLM, Digest and Basic authentication in that order, if each is enabled, regardless of the order specified in the METHODS string.

--no-proxy

Disable use of proxy

--libproxy

Use libproxy to configure proxy automatically (when built with libproxy support)

--key-password-from-fsid

Passphrase for certificate file is automatically generated from the fsid of the file system on which it is stored. The fsid is obtained from the statvfs(2) or statfs(2) system call, depending on the operating system. On a Linux or similar system with GNU coreutils, the fsid used by this option should be equal to the output of the command:

    stat --file-system --printf=%i\\n $CERTIFICATE

It is not the same as the 128-bit UUID of the file system.

-q,--quiet

Less output

-Q,--queue-len=LEN

Set packet queue limit to LEN pkts

-s,--script=SCRIPT

Invoke SCRIPT to configure the network after connection. Without this, routing and name service are unlikely to work correctly. The script is expected to be compatible with the vpnc-script which is shipped with the "vpnc" VPN client. See http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/vpnc-script.html for more information. This version of OpenConnect is configured to use /etc/vpnc-script by default.

On Windows, a relative directory for the default script will be handled as starting from the directory that the openconnect executable is running from, rather than the current directory. The script will be invoked with the command-based script host cscript.exe.

-S,--script-tun

Pass traffic to ’script’ program over a UNIX socket, instead of to a kernel tun/tap device. This allows the VPN IP traffic to be handled entirely in userspace, for example by a program which uses lwIP to provide SOCKS access into the VPN.

-u,--user=NAME

Set login username to NAME

-V,--version

Report version number

-v,--verbose

More output (may be specified multiple times for additional output)

-x,--xmlconfig=CONFIG

XML config file

--authgroup=GROUP

Choose authentication login selection

--authenticate

Authenticate only, and output the information needed to make the connection a form which can be used to set shell environment variables. When invoked with this option, openconnect will not make the connection, but if successful will output something like the following to stdout:
COOKIE=3311180634@13561856@1339425499@B315A0E29D16C6FD92EE...
HOST=10.0.0.1
FINGERPRINT=469bb424ec8835944d30bc77c77e8fc1d8e23a42
Thus, you can invoke openconnect as a non-privileged user (with access to the user’s PKCS#11 tokens, etc.) for authentication, and then invoke openconnect separately to make the actual connection as root:
eval ‘openconnect --authenticate https://vpnserver.example.com‘;
[ -n $COOKIE ] && echo $COOKIE |
sudo openconnect --cookie-on-stdin $HOST --servercert $FINGERPRINT

--cookieonly

Fetch webvpn cookie only; don’t connect

--printcookie

Print webvpn cookie before connecting

--cafile=FILE

Cert file for server verification

--disable-ipv6

Do not advertise IPv6 capability to server

--dtls-ciphers=LIST

Set OpenSSL ciphers to support for DTLS

--dtls-local-port=PORT

Use PORT as the local port for DTLS datagrams

--dump-http-traffic

Enable verbose output of all HTTP requests and the bodies of all responses received from the server.

--no-cert-check

Do not require server SSL certificate to be valid. Checks will still happen and failures will cause a warning message, but the connection will continue anyway. You should not need to use this option - if your servers have SSL certificates which are not signed by a trusted Certificate Authority, you can still add them (or your private CA) to a local file and use that file with the --cafile option.

--no-system-trust

Do not trust the system default certificate authorities. If this option is given, only certificate authorities given with the --cafile option, if any, will be trusted automatically.

| --pfs |  | Enforces Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). That ensures that if the server’s long-term key is compromised, any session keys established before the compromise will be unaffected. If this option is provided and the server does not support PFS in the TLS channel the connection will fail.

PFS is available in Cisco ASA releases 9.1(2) and higher; a suitable cipher suite may need to be manually enabled by the administrator using the ssl encryption setting.

--no-dtls

Disable DTLS

--no-http-keepalive

Version 8.2.2.5 of the Cisco ASA software has a bug where it will forget the client’s SSL certificate when HTTP connections are being re-used for multiple requests. So far, this has only been seen on the initial connection, where the server gives an HTTP/1.0 redirect response with an explicit Connection: Keep-Alive directive. OpenConnect as of v2.22 has an unconditional workaround for this, which is never to obey that directive after an HTTP/1.0 response.

However, Cisco’s support team has failed to give any competent response to the bug report and we don’t know under what other circumstances their bug might manifest itself. So this option exists to disable ALL re-use of HTTP sessions and cause a new connection to be made for each request. If your server seems not to be recognising your certificate, try this option. If it makes a difference, please report this information to the openconnect-devel@lists.infradead.org mailing list.

--no-passwd

Never attempt password (or SecurID) authentication.

--no-xmlpost

Do not attempt to post an XML authentication/configuration request to the server; use the old style GET method which was used by older clients and servers instead.

This option is a temporary safety net, to work around potential compatibility issues with the code which falls back to the old method automatically. It causes OpenConnect to behave more like older versions (4.08 and below) did. If you find that you need to use this option, then you have found a bug in OpenConnect. Please see http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/mail.html and report this to the developers.

--non-inter

Do not expect user input; exit if it is required.

--passwd-on-stdin

Read password from standard input

--token-mode=MODE

Enable one-time password generation using the MODE algorithm. --token-mode=rsa will call libstoken to generate an RSA SecurID tokencode, --token-mode=totp will call liboath to generate an RFC 6238 time-based password, and --token-mode=hotp will call liboath to generate an RFC 4226 HMAC-based password. Yubikey tokens which generate OATH codes in hardware are supported with --token-mode=yubioath

--token-secret={ SECRET[,COUNTER] | @FILENAME }

The secret to use when generating one-time passwords/verification codes. Base 32-encoded TOTP/HOTP secrets can be used by specifying "base32:" at the beginning of the secret, and for HOTP secrets the token counter can be specified following a comma.

RSA SecurID secrets can be specified as an Android/iPhone URI or a raw numeric CTF string (with or without dashes).

For Yubikey OATH the token secret specifies the name of the credential to be used. If not provided, the first OATH credential found on the device will be used.

FILENAME, if specified, can contain any of the above strings. Or, it can contain a SecurID XML (SDTID) seed.

If this option is omitted, and --token-mode is "rsa", libstoken will try to use the software token seed saved in ~/.stokenrc by the "stoken import" command.

--reconnect-timeout

Keep reconnect attempts until so much seconds are elapsed. The default timeout is 300 seconds, which means that openconnect can recover VPN connection after a temporary network down time of 300 seconds.

--servercert=SHA1

Accept server’s SSL certificate only if its fingerprint matches SHA1.

--useragent=STRING

Use STRING as ’User-Agent:’ field value in HTTP header. (e.g. --useragent ’Cisco AnyConnect VPN Agent for Windows 2.2.0133’)

--os=STRING

OS type to report to gateway. Recognized values are: linux, linux-64, win, mac-intel, android, apple-ios. Reporting a different OS type may affect the dynamic access policy (DAP) applied to the VPN session. If the gateway requires CSD, it will also cause the corresponding CSD trojan binary to be downloaded, so you may need to use --csd-wrapper if this code is not executable on the local machine.

## SIGNALS

In the data phase of the connection, the following signals are handled:

| SIGINT |  | performs a clean shutdown by logging the session off, disconnecting from the gateway, and running the vpnc-script to restore the network configuration.
| SIGHUP |  | disconnects from the gateway and runs the vpnc-script, but does not log the session off; this allows for reconnection later using --cookie.

SIGUSR2

forces an immediate disconnection and reconnection; this can be used to quickly recover from LAN IP address changes.

SIGTERM

exits immediately without logging off or running vpnc-script.

## LIMITATIONS

Note that although IPv6 has been tested on all platforms on which openconnect is known to run, it depends on a suitable vpnc-script to configure the network. The standard vpnc-script shipped with vpnc 0.5.3 is not capable of setting up IPv6 routes; the one from git://git.infradead.org/users/dwmw2/vpnc-scripts.git will be required.

## AUTHORS

David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>