1PPP Support for Microsoft's CHAP-80
2===================================
3
4Eric Rosenquist          rosenqui@strataware.com
5(updated by Paul Mackerras)
6(updated by Al Longyear)
7(updated by Farrell Woods)
8(updated by Frank Cusack)
9
10INTRODUCTION
11
12Microsoft has introduced an extension to the Challenge/Handshake
13Authentication Protocol (CHAP) which avoids storing cleartext
14passwords on a server.  (Unfortunately, this is not as secure as it
15sounds, because the encrypted password stored on a server can be used
16by a bogus client to gain access to the server just as easily as if
17the password were stored in cleartext.)  The details of the Microsoft
18extensions can be found in the document:
19
20    <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2433.txt>
21
22In short, MS-CHAP is identified as <auth chap 80> since the hex value
23of 80 is used to designate Microsoft's scheme.  Standard PPP CHAP uses
24a value of 5.  If you enable PPP debugging with the "debug" option and
25see something like the following in your logs, the remote server is
26requesting MS-CHAP:
27
28  rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x2 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth chap 80> <magic 0x46a3>]
29                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^
30
31The standard pppd implementation will indicate its lack of support for
32MS-CHAP by NAKing it:
33
34  sent [LCP ConfNak id=0x2 <auth chap 05>]
35
36Windows NT Server systems are often configured to "Accept only
37Microsoft Authentication" (this is intended to enhance security).  Up
38until now, that meant that you couldn't use this version of PPPD to
39connect to such a system.
40
41
42BUILDING THE PPPD
43
44MS-CHAP uses a combination of MD4 hashing and DES encryption for
45authentication.  You may need to get Eric Young's libdes library in
46order to use my MS-CHAP extensions.  A lot of UNIX systems already
47have DES encryption available via the crypt(3), encrypt(3) and
48setkey(3) interfaces.  Some may (such as that on Digital UNIX)
49provide only the encryption mechanism and will not perform
50decryption.  This is okay.  We only need to encrypt to perform
51MS-CHAP authentication.
52
53If you have encrypt/setkey available, then hopefully you need only
54define these two things in your Makefile: -DUSE_CRYPT and -DCHAPMS.
55Skip the paragraphs below about obtaining and building libdes.  Do
56the "make clean" and "make" as described below.  Linux users
57should not need to modify their Makefiles.  Instead,
58just do "make CHAPMS=1 USE_CRYPT=1".
59
60If you don't have encrypt and setkey, you will need Eric Young's
61libdes library.  You can find it in:
62
63ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/ftp.psy.uq.oz.au/DES/libdes-3.06.tar.gz
64
65Australian residents can get libdes from Eric Young's site:
66
67ftp://ftp.psy.uq.oz.au/pub/Crypto/DES/libdes-3.06.tar.gz
68
69It is also available on many other sites (ask Archie).
70
71I used libdes-3.06, but hopefully anything newer than that will work
72also.  Get the library, build and test it on your system, and install
73it somewhere (typically /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include).
74
75
76
77You should now be ready to (re)compile the PPPD.  Go to the pppd
78subdirectory and make sure the Makefile contains "-DCHAPMS" in the
79CFLAGS or COMPILE_FLAGS macro, and that the LIBS macro (or LDADD for
80BSD systems) contains "-ldes".  Depending on your system and where the
81DES library was installed, you may also need to alter the include and
82library paths used by your compiler.
83
84Do a "make clean" and then a "make" to rebuild pppd.  Assuming all
85goes well, install the new pppd and move on to the CONFIGURATION
86section.
87
88
89CONFIGURATION
90
91If you've never used PPPD with CHAP before, read the man page (type
92"man pppd") and read the description in there.  Basically, you need to
93edit the "chap-secrets" file typically named /etc/ppp/chap-secrets.
94This should contain the following two lines for each system with which
95you use CHAP (with no leading blanks):
96
97    RemoteHost  Account     Secret
98    Account     RemoteHost  Secret
99
100Note that you need both lines and that item 1 and 2 are swapped in the
101second line.  I'm not sure why you need it twice, but it works and I didn't
102have time to look into it further.  The "RemoteHost" is a somewhat
103arbitrary name for the remote Windows NT system you're dialing.  It doesn't
104have to match the NT system's name, but it *does* have to match what you
105use with the "remotename" parameter.  The "Account" is the Windows NT
106account name you have been told to use when dialing, and the "Secret" is
107the password for that account.  For example, if your service provider calls
108their machine "DialupNT" and tells you your account and password are
109"customer47" and "foobar", add the following to your chap-secrets file:
110
111    DialupNT    customer47  foobar
112    customer47  DialupNT    foobar
113
114The only other thing you need to do for MS-CHAP (compared to normal CHAP)
115is to always use the "remotename" option, either on the command line or in
116your "options" file (see the pppd man page for details).  In the case of
117the above example, you would need to use the following command line:
118
119    pppd name customer47 remotename DialupNT <other options>
120
121or add:
122
123    name customer47
124    remotename DialupNT
125
126to your PPPD "options" file.
127
128The "remotename" option is required for MS-CHAP since Microsoft PPP servers
129don't send their system name in the CHAP challenge packet.
130
131
132E=691 (AUTHENTICATION_FAILURE) ERRORS WHEN YOU HAVE THE VALID SECRET (PASSWORD)
133
134If your RAS server is not the domain controller and is not a 'stand-alone'
135server then it must make a query to the domain controller for your domain.
136
137You need to specify the domain name with the user name when you attempt to
138use this type of a configuration. The domain name is specified with the
139local name in the chap-secrets file and with the option for the 'name'
140parameter.
141
142For example, the previous example would become:
143
144    DialupNT            domain\\customer47   foobar
145    domain\\customer47  DialupNT             foobar
146
147and
148
149    pppd name 'domain\\customer47' remotename DialupNT <other options>
150
151or add:
152
153    name domain\\customer47
154    remotename DialupNT
155
156when the Windows NT domain name is simply called 'domain'.
157
158
159TROUBLESHOOTING
160
161Assuming that everything else has been configured correctly for PPP and
162CHAP, the MS-CHAP-specific problems you're likely to encounter are mostly
163related to your Windows NT account and its settings.  A Microsoft server
164returns error codes in its CHAP response.  The following are extracted from
165RFC 2433:
166
167 646 ERROR_RESTRICTED_LOGON_HOURS
168 647 ERROR_ACCT_DISABLED
169 648 ERROR_PASSWD_EXPIRED
170 649 ERROR_NO_DIALIN_PERMISSION
171 691 ERROR_AUTHENTICATION_FAILURE
172 709 ERROR_CHANGING_PASSWORD
173
174You'll see these in your pppd log as a line similar to:
175
176   Remote message: E=649 R=0
177
178The "E=" is the error number from the table above, and the "R=" flag
179indicates whether the error is transient and the client should retry.  If
180you consistently get error 691, then either you're using the wrong account
181name/password, or the DES library or MD4 hashing (in md4.c) aren't working
182properly.  Verify your account name and password (use a Windows NT or
183Windows 95 system to dial-in if you have one available).  If that checks
184out, test the DES library with the "destest" program included with the DES
185library.  If DES checks out, the md4.c routines are probably failing
186(system byte ordering may be a problem) or my code is screwing up.  I've
187only got access to a Linux system, so you're on your own for anything else.
188
189Another thing that might cause problems is that some RAS servers won't
190respond at all to LCP config requests without seeing the word "CLIENT"
191from the other end.  If you see pppd sending out LCP config requests
192without getting any reply, try putting something in your chat script
193to send the word CLIENT after the modem has connected.
194
195STILL TO DO
196
197A site using only MS-CHAP to authenticate has no need to store cleartext
198passwords in the "chap-secrets" file.  A utility that spits out the ASCII
199hex MD4 hash of a given password would be nice, and would allow that hash
200to be used in chap-secrets in place of the password.  The code to do this
201could quite easily be lifted from chap_ms.c (you have to convert the
202password to Unicode before hashing it).  The chap_ms.c file would also have
203to be changed to recognize a password hash (16 binary bytes == 32 ASCII hex
204characters) and skip the hashing stage.  This would have no real security
205value as the hash is plaintext-equivalent.
206