i summon one kim

I wanted to use the OS X VPN client to connect to my home network while on the road. I guess using an OS X server would be the easiest way to get a Mac-compatible VPN server up and running. Using a Cisco running IOS required quite a few lines of configuration.

The OS X VPN client provides terrible feedback. It will happily tell you that there was “no response from the VPN server” when in reality the server responds with a rejection of all the ISAKMP or IPsec transforms proposed by the client. Fortunately both the Cisco debugging messages and verbose output from tcpdump were quite helpful.

In about 3 hours I got it all working, including routing with other VRFs and DMVPN sites. (more…)

The technical details of an SSL certificate are up to the issuing CA, which is understandable. I was still surprised when my SHA-256 CSR resulted in a SHA-1 certificate back in April, when reissuing it due to heartbleed. But I didn’t pursue it at the time.

Now that Google announced sunsetting SHA-1-signed certificates by the end of the year, the issue became more pressing. Fortunately instructions for reissuing GeoTrust-based certificates — such as the RapidSSLonline ones — were already available. (more…)