file is used as the UNIX domain socket for talking to pluto. Use either this option or --rundir, but not both.

path where the UNIX domain socket for talking to the pluto, the pluto.pid file and the pluto.ctl files are found. Use either this option or --ctlsocket, but not both.

Adds the string to all error messages generated by whack.

Display the usage message.

Display the version of whack.

Sets the name of the connection.

The identity of the end. Currently, this can be an IP address (specified as dotted quad or as a Fully Qualified Domain Name, which will be resolved immediately) or as a Fully Qualified Domain Name itself (prefixed by "@" to signify that it should not be resolved), or as user@FQDN, or an X.509 DN. pluto only authenticates the identity, and does not use it for addressing, so, for example, an IP address need not be the one to which packets are to be sent. If the option is absent, the identity defaults to the IP address specified by --host.

The IP address of the end (generally the public interface). If pluto is to act as a responder for IKE negotiations initiated from unknown IP addresses (the "Road Warrior" case), the IP address should be specified as %any (currently, the obsolete notation 0.0.0.0 is also accepted for this). If pluto is to opportunistically initiate the connection, use %opportunistic

The friendly_name (or nickname) of the X.509 certificate that was used when imported the certificate into the NSS database. See ipsec.conf(5) on how to extract this from the PKCS#12 file.

The CKAID of the X.509 certificate or host key.

For X.509 certificates, the CKAID is either the certificate's SubjectKeyIdentifier or the public key's SHA1 fingerprint (when the SubjectKeyIdentifier isn't specified). For host keys the CKAID is the SHA1 fingerprint of the public key.

The X.509 Certificate Authority's Distinguished Name (DN) used as trust anchor for this connection. This is the CA certificate that signed the host certificate, as well as the certificate of the incoming client.

The access control groups used.

Whether or not to send our X.509 certificate credentials. This could potentially give an attacker too much information about which identities are allowed to connect to this host. The default is to use ifasked when we are a Responder, and to use yes (which is the same as forced and always if we are an Initiator. The values no and never are equivalent. NOTE: "forced" does not seem to be actually implemented - do not use it.

How much of our available X.509 trust chain to send with the end certificate, excluding any root CAs. Specifying issuer sends just the issuing intermediate CA, while all will send the entire chain of intermediate CAs.none will not send any CA certs. The default is none which maintains the current libreswan behavior.

The X.509 certificate type number.

The UDP port that IKE listens to on that host. The default is 500. (pluto on this machine uses the port specified by its own command line argument, so this only affects where pluto sends messages.)

Where to route packets for the peer's client (presumably for the peer too, but it will not be used for this). When pluto installs an IPsec SA, it issues a route command. It uses the nexthop as the gateway. The default is the peer's IP address (this can be explicitly written as %direct; the obsolete notation 0.0.0.0 is accepted). This option is necessary if pluto's host's interface used for sending packets to the peer is neither point-to-point nor directly connected to the peer.

The subnet for which the IPsec traffic will be destined. If not specified, the host will be the client. The subnet can be specified using the general form address/mask. The most convenient form of the mask is a decimal integer, specifying the number of leading one bits in the mask. So, for example, 10.0.0.0/8 would specify the class A network "Net 10".

Specify the Port Selectors (filters) to be used on this connection. The general form is protocol/port. This is most commonly used to limit the connection to L2TP traffic only by specifying a value of 17/1701 for UDP (protocol 17) and port 1701. The notation 17/%any can be used to allow all UDP traffic and is needed for L2TP connections with Windows XP machines before Service Pack 2.

IKEv2 (RFC5996) Section 2.9 Traffic Selector narrowing options. See narrowing in ipsec.conf(5).

The IP address for this host to use when transmitting a packet to the remote IPsec gateway itself. This option is used to make the gateway itself use its internal IP, which is part of the --client subnet. Otherwise it will use its nearest IP address, which is its public IP address, which is not part of the subnet-subnet IPsec tunnel, and would therefore not get encrypted.

This end is an xauthserver. It will lookup the xauth user name and password and verify this before allowing the connection to get established.

This end is an xauthclient. To bring this connection up with the --initiate also requires the client to specify --xauthuser username and --xauthpass password

The username for the xauth authentication.This option is normally passed along by ipsec-up(8) when an xauth connection is started using ipsec up connection.

The password for the xauth authentication. This option is normally passed along by ipsec-up(8) when an xauth connection is started using ipsec up connection.

This end is an Mode Config server.

This end is an Mode Config client.

A comma separated list of DNS server IP's to pass along to connecting clients.

A comma separated list of internal DNS domains to pass along to connecting clients.

Specifies that when an RSA public key is needed to authenticate this host, and it isn't already known, fetch it from DNS.

Specifies an external shell command to be run whenever pluto brings up or down a connection. The script is used to build a shell command, so it may contain positional parameters, but ought not to have punctuation that would cause the resulting command to be ill-formed. The default is ipsec _updown. Pluto passes a dozen environment variables to the script about the connection involved.

Separates the specification of the left and right ends of the connection. Pluto tries to decide whether it is left or right based on the information provided on both sides of this option.

Propose and allow preshared secret authentication for IKE peers. This authentication requires that each side use the same secret. May be combined with --rsasig; at least one must be specified.

Propose and allow RSA signatures for authentication of IKE peers. This authentication requires that each side have have a private key of its own and know the public key of its peer. May be combined with --psk; at least one must be specified.

All proposed or accepted IPsec SAs will include non-null ESP. The actual choices of transforms are wired into pluto.

All proposed IPsec SAs will include AH. All accepted IPsec SAs will include AH or ESP with authentication. The actual choices of transforms are wired into pluto. Note that this has nothing to do with IKE authentication.

All proposed IPsec SAs will include IPCOMP (compression).

The IPsec SA should use tunneling. Implicit if the SA is for clients. Must only be used with --authenticate or --encrypt.

The host addresses will be interpreted as IPv4 addresses. This is the default. Note that for a connection, all host addresses must be of the same Address Family (IPv4 and IPv6 use different Address Families).

The host addresses (including nexthop) will be interpreted as IPv6 addresses. Note that for a connection, all host addresses must be of the same Address Family (IPv4 and IPv6 use different Address Families).

The client addresses will be interpreted as IPv4 addresses. The default is to match what the host will be. This does not imply --tunnel so the flag can be safely used when no tunnel is actually specified. Note that for a connection, all tunnel addresses must be of the same Address Family.

The client addresses will be interpreted as IPv6 addresses. The default is to match what the host will be. This does not imply --tunnel so the flag can be safely used when no tunnel is actually specified. Note that for a connection, all tunnel addresses must be of the same Address Family.

There should be Perfect Forward Secrecy - new keying material will be generated for each IPsec SA when running Quick Mode in IKEv1 or Create Child in IKEv2. Without this option, the SAKMP SA keying material is used instead. pluto will propose the same group that was used with the original IKE SA.

Sets the Diffie-Hellman group used. Currently the following values are supported: modp1536 (DHgroup 5), modp2048 (DHgroup 14), modp3072 (DHgroup 15), modp4096 (DHgroup 16), modp6144 (DHgroup 17), and modp8192 (DHgroup 18). It is possible to support the weak and broken modp1024 (DHgroup 2), but this requires a manual recompile and is strongly discouraged.

ESP encryption/authentication algorithm to be used for the connection (phase2 aka IPsec SA). The options must be suitable as a value of ipsec-spi(8). See ipsec.conf(5) for a detailed description of the algorithm format.

This tunnel is using aggressive mode ISAKMP negotiation. The default is main mode. Aggressive mode is less secure than main mode as it reveals your identity to an eavesdropper, but is needed to support road warriors using PSK keys or to interoperate with other buggy implementations insisting on using aggressive mode.

Pull the Mode Config network information from the peer.

Set the delay (in seconds) between Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706) keepalives (R_U_THERE, R_U_THERE_ACK) that are sent for this connection (default 30 seconds).

Set the length of time (in seconds) we will idle without hearing either an R_U_THERE poll from our peer, or an R_U_THERE_ACK reply. After this period has elapsed with no response and no traffic, we will declare the peer dead, and remove the SA (default 120 seconds).

In some cases, for example when ESP packets are filtered or when a broken IPsec peer does not properly recognise NAT, it can be useful to force RFC-3948 encapsulation using this option. It causes pluto lie and tell the remote peer that RFC-3948 encapsulation (ESP in UDP port 4500 packets) is required.

Only initiate the connection when we have traffic to send over the connection.

Allow unencrypted traffic to flow until the tunnel is initiated.

Drop unencrypted traffic silently.

Drop unencrypted traffic silently, but send an ICMP message notifying the other end.

To be documented.

To be documented.

To be documented.

To be documented.

Display all times in UTC.

Lists all of the X.509 information known to pluto.

List all the public keys that have been successfully loaded.

List all the X.509 certificates that are currently loaded.

List all the loaded X.509 certificates that are about to expire or have expired.

List all the Certificate Authority X.509 certificates that are currently loaded.

List all the loaded Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs).

How long pluto will propose that an ISAKMP SA be allowed to live. The default is 28800 (eight hours) and the maximum is 86400 (1 day). This option will not affect what is accepted. pluto will reject proposals that exceed the maximum.

How long pluto will propose that an IPsec SA be allowed to live. The default is 28800 (eight hours) and the maximum is 86400 (one day). This option will not affect what is accepted. pluto will reject proposals that exceed the maximum.

How long before an SA's expiration should pluto try to negotiate a replacement SA. This will only happen if pluto was the initiator. The default is 540 (nine minutes).

Maximum size of random component to add to rekeymargin, expressed as a percentage of rekeymargin. pluto will select a delay uniformly distributed within this range. By default, the percentage will be 100. If greater determinism is desired, specify 0. It may be appropriate for the percentage to be much larger than 100.

A misnomer. Only rekey a connection if we were the Initiator and there was recent traffic on the existing connection. This applies to Phase 1 and Phase 2. This is currently the only automatic way for a connection to terminate. It may be useful with Road Warrior or Opportunistic connections. Since SA lifetime negotiation is take-it-or-leave it, a Responder normally uses the shorter of the negotiated or the configured lifetime. This only works because if the lifetime is shorter than negotiated, the Responder will rekey in time so that everything works. This interacts badly with --dontrekey. In this case, the Responder will end up rekeying to rectify a shortfall in an IPsec SA lifetime; for an ISAKMP SA, the Responder will accept the negotiated lifetime.

The deletestate form deletes the state object with the specified serial number. This is useful for selectively deleting instances of connections.

When a routing is attempted for a connection, there must not already be a routing for a different connection with the same subnet but different interface or destination, or if there is, it must not be being used by an IPsec SA. Otherwise the attempt will fail.

The unroute form of the whack command tells pluto to undo a routing. pluto will refuse if an IPsec SA is using the connection. If another connection is sharing the same routing, it will be left in place. Without a routing, packets will be sent without encryption or authentication.

The initiate form of the whack command will relay back from pluto status information via the UNIX domain socket (unless --asynchronous is specified). Currently whack simply copies this to stderr. When the request is finished (eg. the SAs are established or pluto gives up), pluto closes the channel, causing whack to terminate.

This will cause pluto to attempt to opportunistically initiate a connection from here to the there, even if a previous attempt had been made. The whack log will show the progress of this attempt.

Initiate a rekey of the connection's established IKE or Child SA.

Initiate a delete of the connection's established IKE or Child SA. For --down-ike and --down-child first clear connection's UP policy.

Delete the specified connection. Any negotiating or established SAs are terminated. Any routing is removed.

Delete any Child SAs associated with the connection, and remove UP from the connection's policy (so the connection is no longer required to stay up). If the connection has an IKE SA that is not not shared with other connections then that is also is deleted.

Since the connection is still in place --down does not prevent new negotiations. For instance, the peer may initiate, or a routed (on-demand) connection will initiate when there is traffic. --unroute will also prevent traffic initiating the connection, and --delete will prevent all negotiation.

If the remote peer has crashed, and therefore did not notify us, we keep sending encrypted traffic, and rejecting all plaintext (non-IKE) traffic from that remote peer. The --crash brings our end down as well for all the known connections to the specified ip-address.

If the remote peer has crashed, and therefore did not notify us, we keep sending encrypted traffic, and rejecting all plaintext (non-IKE) traffic from that remote peer. The --crash brings our end down as well for all the known connections to the specified ip-address.

The --global-redirect option controls whether pluto will instruct remote peers to redirect IKE/Child SA's during IKE_SA_INIT. Valid options are no, yes and auto, where auto means remote peers will be redirected if DDoS mode is active.

The destination, or a list of destinations, where the peers will be redirected.

The destination, or a list of destinations, where the peers will be redirected. Specifying the connection name is optional. If not specified the mechanism will redirect all currently active peers. If specified, only the peers from connection connection_name will be redirected.

Specifies the identity of the peer for which a public key should be used. Its form is identical to the identity in the connection. If no public key is specified, pluto attempts to find KEY records from DNS for the id (if a FQDN) or through reverse lookup (if an IP address). Note that there several interesting ways in which this is not secure.

Specifies that the new key is added to the collection; otherwise the new key replaces any old ones.

Specifies the value of the RSA public key. It is a sequence of bytes as described in RFC 2537 "RSA/MD5 KEYs and SIGs in the Domain Name System (DNS)". It is base-64 encoded with the prefix 0s prepended.

Start listening for IKE traffic on public interfaces.

Stop listening for IKE traffic on public interfaces.

Place pluto into busy mode and activate anti-DDoS measures.

Pull pluto out of busy mode and deactivate anti-DDoS measures.

Activate the built-in detection mechanism for the anti-DDoS measures.

To be documented.

To be documented

To be documented.