Questions on Free Radius with Shared Secret and special characters

[Alan DeKok]

On Mar 23, 2023, at 6:18 PM, Tammy Dore via Freeradius-Users <freeradius-users at lists.freeradius.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Alan,
> 
> Thank you for replying so quickly to my email.
> 
> 1.  So, from what I gather, correct me if I am wrong, that the comma and semicolon is no longer supported in the shared secret for Free Radius 3.0.19, is that correct?

  That is the exact opposite of what I said.

>  Just fyi because you seemed to be in the dark, the error when using shared secret "testing123," with no actual quotes when I run the application on FR 3.1.19:
>        radiusd:83578:1679608622.055769:Thu Mar 23 16:57:02 2023: Thu Mar 23 16:57:02 2023 : Info: Dropping packet without response because of error: Received packet from 10.16.xxx.xxx with invalid Message-Authenticator!  (Shared secret is incorrect.)
>               (this error is reported multiple times, which I don't think it is descriptive that the problem is due to an unsupported character versus mismatched shared secret)

  If the secret has special characters, use a single-quoted string, or a double-quoted string.

> 2.  From what I also gathered from some testing, in release 2.2.9;  the comma works, and the semicolon works with quotes around the shared secret.   Is there a reason why the comma and semi colon no longer work in 3.0.19?

  Changes?

  v2 to v3 is a major version upgrade.  All kinds of things changed.

> 3.  Are there any other characters that have changed behavior in Free Radius for release 3.0.19?

  See the documentation, or the source code.  I don't see much point in copying that to the list.

  If you're not sure about special characters, just use a quoted string.

> 4.  Is there a recommended solution for handling the comma and semicolon in 3.0.19?

  As I said... use a single-quoted string, or a double-quoted string.

  Alan DeKok.