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strongSwan

Modern IPsec-based VPN implementation

Remote Access & VPN ★ 3k stars Hard setup GPL-2.0

strongSwan is a complete IPsec implementation for Linux and other platforms supporting IKEv1 and IKEv2 key exchange. It is widely used for site-to-site and remote access VPNs.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Full IPsec implementation
  • IKEv1 and IKEv2 support
  • Certificate-based auth
  • Cross-platform

Strengths

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Active community (3k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM

Is strongSwan secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect strongSwan's latest release (6.1.0). OSV.dev lists 32 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2026-78130, published 2026-09-11 (33 days ago), fixed in 6.1.0

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

strongSwan replaces

Self-hosted Cisco AnyConnect alternatives

Health badge

Maintain strongSwan? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 90 · excellent

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   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for strongSwan
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The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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