Automatic Configuration Method for the IKE Protocol based on X.509

The Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol is most widely used as a security key exchange protocol on the Internet. Security policies used by the IKE protocol must be configured in advance, however the complex options and manual settings cause inconvenience. This paper proposes an automatic configuration method for the IKE protocol based on X.509 certificate. Security policies are embedded in the certificate, read, and added into the IKE configuration file by a negotiation assistant module in order to achieve automatic IKE configuration. Our proposed method reduces the complexity of configuration process and improves the adaptability of the IKE protocol.