RADIUS shared secret limitations in RSA Authentication Manager

[#1]

Article Number

000028222

Applies To

RSA Product Set: SecurID
RSA Product/Service Type: Authentication Manager

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 like dollar sign ($) for RADIUS shared secrets.

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

Please refer to an external RADIUS Overview document from Juniper Networks that includes details on RADIUS shared secrets.