Cisco ASA: web interface not working

Cisco ASA: web interface not working

I had to troubleshoot a Cisco ASA today, where the client wasn’t able to connect to the management web interface anymore via https. The customer didn’t install ASDM locally, but always starts the Java-based version.

After upgrading the Cisco ASA to software version 8.2(1) and a reboot, the client wasn’t able to connect to the web interface anymore. I was able to connect to the firewall with my locally installed ASDM client, but I couldn’t access the web interface either.

While troubleshooting I first tried the basic settings, like management access-list, regenerate crypto keys and change the management port. All these options didn’t help, but the strange thing was that the web interface was working remotely.

While working with Mozilla I received the following error:

cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s).

In Google Chrome I receive the following error:

Error 113 (net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH): Unknown error.

And of course Internet Explorer didn’t gave any usable information. I started looking at the supported encryption algorithms within the firewall with a show version. I noticed that VPN-3DES-AES was disabled. The next step was the enable the VPN-3DES-AES ciphers. The upgrade license for this feature is available for free at Cisco License.

I activated the VPN-3DES-AES feature, but still wasn’t able to connect to the firewall with the web interface. I checked the SSL encryption used by the firewall.

fw01# show ssl
Accept connections using SSLv2, SSLv3 or TLSv1 and negotiate to SSLv3 or TLSv1
Start connections using SSLv3 and negotiate to SSLv3 or TLSv1
Enabled cipher order: des-sha1
Disabled ciphers: 3des-sha1 rc4-md5 rc4-sha1 aes128-sha1 aes256-sha1 null-sha1
No SSL trust-points configured
Certificate authentication is not enabled

The firewall still didn’t enable the ciphers supported in my browser. If the VPN-3DES-AES license isn’t installed, only the cipher des-sha1 is enabled by default. I added the correct ciphers with the following command:

fw01(config)# ssl encryption aes256-sha1 aes128-sha1 3des-sha1

After adding the command I was able to connect to the ASA with both the web interface and the ASDM.