IKE Daemon

The in.iked daemon automates the management of cryptographic keys for IPsec on a Solaris system. The daemon negotiates with a remote system that is running the same protocol to provide authenticated keying materials for security associations (SAs) in a protected manner. The daemon must be running on all systems that plan to communicate securely.

The IKE daemon is automatically loaded at boot time if the configuration file for the IKE policy, /etc/inet/ike/config, exists. The daemon checks the syntax of the configuration file.

When the IKE daemon runs, the system authenticates itself to its peer IKE entity in the Phase 1 exchange. The peer is defined in the IKE policy file, as are the authentication methods. The daemon then establishes the keys for the Phase 2 exchange. At an interval specified in the policy file, the IKE keys are refreshed automatically. The in.iked daemon listens for incoming IKE requests from the network and for requests for outbound traffic through the PF_KEY socket. For more information, see the pf_key(7P) man page.

Two commands support the IKE daemon. The ikeadm command enables you to view and modify the IKE policy. The ikecert command enables you to view and manage the public key databases. This command manages the local databases, ike.privatekeys and publickeys. This command also manages public key operations and the storage of public keys on hardware.