Recently I wrote about denying access to Windows 10 Always On VPN users or computers. In that post I provided specific guidance for denying access to computers configured with the device tunnel. To summarize, the process involved exporting the device certificate from the issuing Certification Authority (CA) server and placing it in the Untrusted Certificates certificate store on each VPN server. In theory, simply revoking the device certificate should be all that’s required to prevent device tunnel connections.
Revocation Check Failure
As it turns out, a bug in Windows Server Routing and Remote Access prevents this from working as expected. Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019 all fail to check the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) for IKEv2 VPN connections using machine certificate authentication (for example an Always On VPN device tunnel).
Updates for Windows Server
Microsoft has released fixes to support device tunnel certificate revocation for the following operating systems.
Windows Server 2019 – KB4505658 (build 17763.652)
Windows Server 2016 – KB4503294 (build 14393.3053)
Windows Server 2012/R2 – Will not be updated.
Enable Revocation Check
Additional configuration is required to enable support for CRL checking. Microsoft published guidance for configuring CRL revocation checks for IKEv2 VPN connections using machine certificate authentication here. Specifically, administrators must enable the RootCertificateNameToAccept parameter and set a registry key to enable this functionality.
Open an elevated PowerShell window and run the following commands to enable CRL checking for IKEv2 VPN connections using machine certificate authentication.
$Thumbprint = ‘Root CA Certificate Thumbprint’
$RootCACert = (Get-ChildItem -Path cert:\LocalMachine\root | Where-Object {$_.Thumbprint -eq $Thumbprint})
Set-VpnAuthProtocol -RootCertificateNameToAccept $RootCACert -PassThru
New-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RemoteAccess\Parameters\Ikev2\’ -Name CertAuthFlags -PropertyTYpe DWORD -Value ‘4’ -Force
Restart-Service RemoteAccess -PassThru
A PowerShell script to update the RootCertificateNameToAccept parameter on multiple VPN servers can be found here.
Revoking Certificates
To prevent a Windows 10 Always On VPN device tunnel connection, the administrator must first revoke the certificate on the issuing CA. Next, open an elevated command window an enter the following commands. Repeat these steps on each VPN server in the enterprise.
certutil -urlcache * delete
certutil -setreg chain\ChainCacheResyncFiletime @now
Additional Information
Denying Access to Windows 10 Always On VPN Users or Computers
Blocking VPN Clients that use Revoked Certificates
PowerShell Script to Configure RootCertificateNameToAccept on GitHub
The Windows Server Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) includes support for the Secure Sockets Tunneling Protocol (SSTP), which is a Microsoft proprietary VPN protocol that uses SSL/TLS for security and privacy of VPN connections. The advantage of using SSTP for Always On VPN is that it is firewall friendly and ensures consistent remote connectivity even behind highly restrictive firewalls.
When deploying Windows 10 Always On VPN using Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) authentication with client certificates, administrators may find the VPN connection does not establish automatically. In this specific scenario the client is prompted to select a certificate to use to authenticate to the VPN server.
