Issue with pre-shared key...

[mustaine737]

A simple IPSEC tunnel is being set up between a Cisco 7200 router and a Cisco PIX firewall:

While using pre-shared authentication for the ISAKMP SA, this key is used: A3hU!q@Li9f$

The main mode exchange fails at the key exchange, and I receive sanity check failures - which usually points to a key mismatch.

If the key is changed to something simple, say "Key12345" it works okay.

I've double and doublechecked the config to make sure the keys were identical. I had 2 other network engineers confirm to make sure I wasnt hallucinating. Also, there are several other IPSEC tunnels on both peers with fairly complex keys similar to the one tried with.

My question is: are there any known issues with certain special characters that could cause this? has anyone seen this before?

As always, thank you very much.

 

[KiscoKid]

Sounds like a software issue. You could do worse than trawl the Bug Toolkit on the CCO and try and locate a bug that matches the issue you are seeing.

Awhile ago, I saw a simialr issue with encrypted MD5 passwords with special characters establishing over BGP sessions.

If such a bug exists, the bug report will tell you which IOS versions are fixed and allow the use of special characters.

 

[mustaine737]

KiscoKid, thanks for your reply.

I couldnt find anything on the Buglist online..oh well..