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My college offers a VPN service to connect to the campus network via the AnyConnect client from Cisco.

Since I don't like to install proprietary software for a functionality that pretty much every operating system offers at this point, I was wondering if I can get around installing the AnyConnect client.

From what I found out, my college is using Cisco IPsec. For my operating system to connect it needs a shared secret or a certificate and a group name. Since the AnyConnect client doesn't ask for these details, I don't know them but the Cisco software obviously needs to figure them out by itself.

My question now is, (how) can I find out these details? Would it be possible to run the AnyConnect client and then read out the connection details?

Hennes
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comfreak
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    The older Cisco VPN clients (prior to "AnyConnect") used *.vcf config files for each connection. You can see the encrypted shared secret in that file, and run it thru a decryptor (easily found on the web) to get the original secret word/phrase. AnyConnect does not use the same VCF files, and I haven't found any way to see the shared secret yet. – jimtut Apr 13 '16 at 17:25

1 Answers1

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After some research I had found openconnect which is open source and a replacement for the proprietary client from Cisco. It's not perfect but worked fine for my use.

intagli
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comfreak
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  • installation instruction found here: https://www.jyu.fi/digipalvelut/en/guides/wlan-and-vpn/vpn-linux – hwak Dec 25 '19 at 09:52