Technical Tip: HTML Characters in Radius Secret

FortiNAC

NOTE: FortiNAC is now named FortiNAC-F. For post-9.4 articles, see FortiNAC-F. FortiNAC is a zero-trust network access solution that provides users with enhanced visibility into the Internet of Things (IoT) devices on their enterprise networks.

Article Id 300737

Description

This article describes that Radius secrets that use HTML characters must be saved via CLI.

Behavior is observed when a radius secret is entered with HTML characters such as the ampersand '&'.
Example Radius Secret: SuUA01&fTcLkyopnXQ
What gets saved: SuUA01&fTcLkyopnXQ

Logs on the devices expecting the correct secret will throw errors such as 'Invalid Authenticator' or 'Bad Secret' even though the user confirms the secret is the same on all devices.

Scope

FortiNAC and FortiNAC-F v9.4.X and v7.2.5.

Solution

From the CLI of the device:

NACOS:

execute enter-shell

device -ip <deviceip> -setAttr -name RadiusSecret -value "radiussecret"

CentOS:

device -ip <deviceip> -setAttr -name RadiusSecret -value "radiussecret"

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