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A RADIUS server is a critical part of a network security system. Any successful attack on a RADIUS server means that anyone can be authenticated, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Two requirements are necessary for any secure server; secure source code, and secure configuration.

The Source Code is Secure

The security page contains the public record of security issues in FreeRADIUS. (Try asking a commercial vendor for that information!) The source code is freely available, including the complete history of all changes. Our policy is to be transparent and open about all security issues with the server.

While this policy may seem to open the server to attacks from people looking at the source code, the reality is different. That openness has permitted us to be part of the Coverity scan project for many years. All of the issues found by Coverity have been fixed. That is, the code has been scanned for a large class of potential issues, and has been proven to not be vulnerable to those issues.

"Fail-Safe" Configuration

The server configuration is designed to be "fail-safe". The default configuration requires administrator edits before any user can be authenticated. The default configuration and internal policy is to reject all requests that have not successfully been authenticated.