RADIUS shared secret limitations of RADIUS clients configured with RSA Authentication Manager
Originally Published: 2014-10-21
Last Modified: 2024-12-17
Article Number
000060884
Applies To
RSA Product Set: SecurID
RSA Product/Service Type: Authentication Manager
RSA Version/Condition: 8.x
Issue
  • Users failed to authenticate with an error in authentication activity report, either from an historical report  authentication activity report in the Security Console (Reporting > Reports) or from the real time authentication activity repoirt (Reporting > Real Time Activity Monitor > Authentication Activity Monitor)
Authentication method failed, passcode format error
  • The RADIUS log (available from the Operations Console under Administration > Download Troubleshooting Files) shows: 
Unable to find user <user name> with matching password
  • Name resolution is confirmed for both forward and reverse lookup. 
Cause
RADIUS client devices have some limitations for shared secrets.
Resolution
Do not use special characters for RADIUS shared secrets for RADIUS clients that do not support them.

RSA Authentication Manager supports shared secrets of up to 127 alphanumeric characters, including spaces and the following special characters:
 
~ ! @ # $ % ^ & *( ) _ + | \ = - ' { } [ ] : " ' ; < > ? / . , 

However, not all network access devices support shared secrets of up to 127 alphanumeric characters or the above special characters.

Implement shared secrets that are fully supported by RADIUS devices in your network.

Note that some special characters that are within a secret act as Linux escape characters.  For example, an exclamation point can be the first or last character in a secret, but never embedded in it.
Notes
Authentication Manager 8.0 - 8.5 uses Steel-Belted RADIUS (SBR). Please refer to an external RADIUS Overview document from Juniper Networks that includes details on RADIUS shared secrets.

The version of RADIUS used by Authentication Manager was changed from SBR to FreeRADIUS in Authentication Manager 8.6.

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