Identity Parsing in strongSwan¶

The type and binary encoding of identity strings specified in left|rightid in ipsec.conf or in connections.<conn>.local<suffix>.id in swanctl.conf (and other places where identities are parsed from strings, e.g. in selectors in ipsec.secrets) are detected as follows:

• If the string value contains an equal sign (=) it is assumed to be a Distinguished Name (DN), with RDNs separated by
  commas (,) or slashes (/ - the string must start with a slash to use this syntax). An attempt is made to create a binary
  ASN.1 encoding from this string. If that fails the type is set to KEY_ID with the literal string value adopted as encoding.

• If the string value contains an @ the type depends on the position of that character:
  • If the string begins with @# the type is set to KEY_ID and the string following that prefix is assumed to be the
    hex-encoded binary value of the identity.
  • If the string begins with @@ the type is set to USER_FQDN and the encoding is the literal string after that prefix.
  • If the string begins with @ the type is set to FQDN and the encoding is the literal string after that prefix.
    In versions before 5.0.0 this prefix prevents that a FQDN is resolved into an IP address (current versions don't
    automatically resolve FQDNs when parsing identities).
  • All remaining strings containing an @ are assumed to be of type USER_FQDN/RFC822 with the literal string value
    as encoding.

• If the value does not contain any @ or = characters it is parsed as follows:
  • If the value is an empty string, or equals %any, %any6, 0.0.0.0, ::, or * the type is set to ID_ANY, which matches
    any other identity.
  • If the value contains a colon (:) it is assumed to be an IPv6 address. But if parsing the address and converting it
    to its binary encoding fails the type is set to KEY_ID and the encoding is the literal value. Since 5.4.0 subnets in
    CIDR notation and address ranges (two addresses separated by a - without spaces) are parsed too (they can't
    be used as IKE identities but e.g. to define shared secrets in ipsec.secrets or swanctl.conf).
  • For all other strings an attempt at parsing them as IPv4 addresses is made (since 5.4.0 also as subnets and ranges,
    see above). If that fails the type is set to FQDN and the literal value is adopted as encoding (this is where domain
    names and simple names end up).

Usually, this auto detection works very well. But in some special cases it might be inadequate or produce the wrong result.
For instance, strongSwan does not nest RDNs when generating the binary encoding of an ASN.1 DN, which some PKIs do.
Another example is the need to encode FQDNs as KEY_IDs, which is a bit inconvenient with the syntax above as the binary
encoding has to be provided after @#.

For such situations it is possible since 5.2.2 to enforce a specific identity type and to provide the binary encoding of the identity.
To do this a prefix may be used, followed by a colon (:). If the number sign (#) follows the colon, the remaining data is interpreted
as hex encoding, otherwise the string is used as is as the identification data.

Note: The latter implies that no conversion is performed for non-string identities. For example, ipv4:10.0.0.1 does not create a
valid ID_IPV4_ADDR IKE identity, as it does not get converted to binary 0x0a000001. Instead, one could use ipv4:#0a000001 to
get a valid identity, but just using the implicit type with automatic conversion as described abvove is usually simpler. The same
applies to the ASN.1 encoded types (for subject DNs the pki --dn command might be useful).
The following prefixes are known: ipv4, ipv6, ipv4net, ipv6net, ipv4range, ipv6range, rfc822, email, userfqdn, fqdn, dns, asn1dn,
asn1gn and keyid. Custom type prefixes may be specified by surrounding the numerical type value with curly brackets.