IPsec with public key authentication on Mikrotik RouterOS

Setup

Generate an RSA keypair

[admin@mtk1] > /ip ipsec key
[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec key> generate-key mykey key-size=4096
For key bigger than 1024bit this may take a while..
[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec key> print
Flags: P - private-key, R - rsa
 #    NAME                                                             KEY-SIZE
 0 PR mykey                                                            4096-bit

Exchange public keys with your peer

Export the public key to a file.

[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec key> export-pub-key mykey file-name=mykey.pub

[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec key> /file print where name=mykey.pub
 # NAME                   TYPE                        SIZE CREATION-TIME
 2 mykey.pub              ssh key                      451 jul/20/2014 12:35:33

Copy the file to your workstation and send it to your peer. The contents of the file should look like this:

Convert your peer’s public key to the PEM format using the pubkey-converter script, if necessary.

Configuration

Configure the phase 1 IKE parameters

In this example, we’ll use the following settings:

Key	Value
Encryption	AES-128
Hash	HMAC-SHA1
DH Group	5 (modp1536)
Lifetime	28800 seconds
Peer address	192.0.2.2
Local address	192.0.2.1

Copy your peer’s PEM-encoded public key to the router and import it. (Hit enter when it asks for a passphrase)

[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec key> import peer-key.pub name=peer-key
passphrase:

[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec key> print
Flags: P - private-key, R - rsa
 #    NAME                                                             KEY-SIZE
 0 PR mykey                                                            4096-bit
 1  R peer-key                                                         4096-bit

Configure your peer definition to use the public key

[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec peer> add address=192.0.2.2 local-address=192.0.2.1 enc-algorithm=aes-128 hash-algorithm=sha1 dh-group=modp1536 lifetime=28800 key=mykey remote-key=peer-key auth-method=rsa-key
[admin@mtk1] /ip ipsec peer> print
Flags: X - disabled
 0   address=192.0.2.2/32 local-address=192.0.2.1 passive=no port=500
     auth-method=rsa-key key=mykey remote-key=peer-key generate-policy=no
     exchange-mode=main send-initial-contact=yes nat-traversal=no
     proposal-check=obey hash-algorithm=sha1 enc-algorithm=aes-128
     dh-group=modp1536 lifetime=8h lifebytes=0 dpd-interval=2m
     dpd-maximum-failures=5

All done! Configure the phase 2 parameters as you otherwise would.

Full GRE/IPsec example

# jul/20/2014 13:00:04 by RouterOS 6.15
# software id = HBCA-0B2J
#
/interface gre
add dscp=inherit local-address=192.0.2.1 mtu=1400 name=gre-tunnel1 \
    remote-address=192.0.2.2
/ip address
add address=10.1.2.0/31 interface=gre-tunnel1 network=10.1.2.0
/ip ipsec proposal
set [ find default=yes ] lifetime=1h pfs-group=modp1536
/ip ipsec peer
add address=192.0.2.2/32 auth-method=rsa-key dh-group=modp1536 key=mykey \
    lifetime=8h local-address=192.0.2.1 remote-key=peer-key
/ip ipsec policy
add dst-address=192.0.2.2/32 protocol=gre sa-dst-address=192.0.2.2 \
    sa-src-address=192.0.2.1 src-address=192.0.2.1/32