Auto-connect to FortiGate VPN

This uses an OSS client for connecting to FortiGate that builds on top of the PPP protocol (uses pppd under the hood). It's fast.

Install requirements

• A Node.js version

• https://github.com/adrienverge/openfortivpn (brew install openfortivpn on macOS, there are packages for Linux), or, alternatively, openconnect (brew install openconnect)

• git clone https://github.com/dext/openfortivpn-webview && cd openfortivpn-webview/openfortivpn-webview-electron && npm install (this should be built and distributed in a nicer way, as an electron app.)

• Add openfortivpn (or openconnect) to your sudoers file (it needs sudo to add routes, modify DNS, etc.) Save this in /etc/sudoers.d/openfortivpn:

  Cmnd_Alias  OPENFORTIVPN = /opt/homebrew/bin/openfortivpn
  
  ALL       ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: OPENFORTIVPN
  

  Make sure to adjust the path if you're not on macOS and/or haven't installed openfortivpn via Homebrew.

• Add the following to /etc/ppp/peers/dext to customise the behaviour of pppd (to enforce quick connection downtime detection) – it essentially overrides the params openfortivpn uses to connect to the VPN (I've taken them from the openfortivpn repo) and adds the following: lcp-echo-interval 2 and lcp-echo-failure 3 (see man pppd to understand how these two work). Paste the following:

  230400
  :169.254.2.1
  noipdefault
  ipcp-accept-local
  noaccomp
  noauth
  default-asyncmap
  nopcomp
  receive-all
  nodefaultroute
  nodetach
  lcp-max-configure 40
  mru 1354
  lcp-echo-interval 2
  lcp-echo-failure 3
  usepeerdns
  

  usepeerdns fixes the DNS resoltion on macOS, as suggested here: make DNS resolution work on macOS.

Run it

Preferred: with openfortivpn (with auto-connect)

From within the cloned repo:

./connect-dext

With openconnect (quick and dirty but auto-connects)

cd openfortivpn-webview/openfortivpn-webview-electron/ && while true; do npx electron index.js access.dext.pub --url-regex '/sslvpn/portal/index.html' | sudo openconnect access.dext.pub --protocol=fortinet --cookie-on-stdin --reconnect-timeout=5 --force-dpd=5; sleep 5; done

---

Original readme of openfortivpn-webview

Application to perform the SAML single sing-on and easily retrieve the SVPNCOOKIE needed by openfortivpn.

The application will simply open the SAML page to let you sign in. As soon as the SVPNCOOKIE is set, the application will print it to stdout and exit.

The application comes in two flavors:

• openfortivpn-webview-qt
• openfortivpn-webview-electron

They should be equivalent, but openfortivpn-webview-qt may have some issues with some SAML providers.

openfortivpn-webview-electron is readily available, see the instructions on how to install it.

Usage

Obtain SVPNCOOKIE for host vpn-gateway:

openfortivpn-webview vpn-gateway

You can also specify an authentication realm (normally not required):

openfortivpn-webview vpn-gateway:1234 --realm=foo

By default the application builds the SAML URL using the given host, port and realm. You can alternatively provide an already built URL:

openfortivpn-webview --url 'https://vpn-gateway:1234/remote/saml/start?realm=foo'

The application exits automatically as soon as it prints SVPNCOOKIE to stdout. You can change this behavior passing --keep-open. The application will in this case stay open and keep printing SVPNCOOKIE as its value changes, thus generating a stream of text.

The application does not print SVPNCOOKIE until it finds a URL matching the regular expression passed to --url-regex. If no regular expression is specified, the application will look for URLs containing /sslvpn/portal.html. Waiting for such URL allows to deal with concurrent VPN sessions when the gateway is configured to allow a single active session.

The inner Chromium engine may print a lot of messages. You can disable them to only see the messages of the application.

# If you use the Qt variant
QT_LOGGING_RULES="*=false;webview=true" QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--enable-logging --log-level=3" openfortivpn-webview vpn-gateway

# If you use the Electron variant
openfortivpn-webview --enable-logging --log-level=3 vpn-gateway

Proxy servers

If you have to use an http proxy to access the vpn gateway or the SAML id provider, you can pass the --proxy-server option to Chromium.

Note that when using the Electron variant, all command line options are also passed along to Chromium.

# If you use the Qt variant
QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--proxy-server=proxy.example.com:8080" openfortivpn-webview vpn-gateway

# If you use the Electron variant
openfortivpn-webview vpn-gateway --proxy-server=proxy.example.com:8080

Passing command line options when using npm start

If you use npm start to start the Electron variant, you need to separate the command line options to the application from the command line options to npm using --, like this:

npm start myvpnhost -- --proxy-server=proxy.example.com:8080